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V 







GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. 



George Washington 

PATRIOT, SOLDIER, STATESMAN 

FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 



JAMES A. HARRISON 

ii 
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA; AUTHOR OF " THE 

STORY OF GREECE," ETC. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 

37 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 

S^f ^nickeibochcx ^xess 
1906 



■ H 3 



UCflARY of CONGRESS 
TwoCoi)ie$ KectWed 

AUG 3 1906 

//Cooitfifrht Entry 

Glass //«- xxc. no. 

COPY A. ^ 



Copyright, iqo6 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Ube IRnicftcibochei- ff>ics6, Ulevp Jijorh 



To 

L. L. H. AND J. L. H., 

The Two 

Who Have Contributed Most 

To Render This Work Possible 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS * 



It gives the author great pleasure to acknowledge 
here the help afforded him in the preparation of this 
work by Mr. J. P. Kennedy, State Librarian, Rich- 
mond, Virginia ; Mr. John S. Patton, Librarian of the 
University of Virginia; Miss Anna S. Tuttle, Assist- 
ant Librarian of the University ; and Mr. R. Walton 
Moore of Fairfax, Virginia ; and, above all, to Mrs. 
J. A. Harrison for invaluable assistance of every kind 
always cheerfully rendered. 

It vv^ould be useless to enumerate the countless de- 
tails of the Washington Bibliography in constructing 
even a brief narrative like this : suffice it to say that 
Washington's own Writings in the exhaustive and 
accurate edition of W. C. Ford form the chief source 
of the author's statements ; and to these must be added 
the illuminating works of Fiske, Bancroft, McMaster, 
Winsor, Woodrow Wilson, Lecky, Trevelyan, P. L. 
Ford, and Hapgood ; Marshall, Lodge, and G. W. P. 
Custis. 

J. A. H. 
University of Virginia 

February 22, 1906 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
"At the Fireside" ..... 

Emigration to New World — Differences between 
Old and New World — Strtiggles — Explorers — Vir- 
ginia in early times — Birth of Washington — 
"Wakefield"' — Marian Harland on Washington's 
birthplace — Washington's youth — His mother — 
G. W. P. Custis on Madam Washington — Anecdote 
of Washington — Mary Ball's features — Death of 
Augustine Washington — The widow — Washington's 
boyhood and early education — Surveying and 
mathematics — Hardships — "Rules of Civility" — At 
Fredericksburg — Mount Vernon — Marye's school — 
Willis on Washington as a school-boy. 

CHAPTER II. 
Greenway Court ..... 

Col. Beverley on Virginia — Its population and 
exploration — Tobacco — Hugh Jones on Virginia — 
"No popery" — Character of Virginians — Thomas, 
Lord Fairfax — Philip Bruce on Virginia — "Green- 
way Court" — Mrs. Pryor's description — "Ferry 
Farm" — Mary Washington — The Fairfaxes of 
Belvoir — Admiral Vernon and "grog" — Marriages in 
Virginia — Washington family — ^The navy selected 
for George — His uncle and mother object — Em- 
ployed as surveyor by Lord Fairfax — Character of 
his mind — His name — Salary — First-love— Verses. 



17 



vlii Contents 

CHAPTER III. 
A Boy's Journal ..... 34 

M. D. Conway on Washington — ^The "Lowland 
Beauty" — Mary Gary — Poetry — Washington's char- 
acter — Lord Fairfax — Woodrow Wilson on Fair- 
fax and the pioneer life — Washington's Journal 
— Describes his surveyor's expedition and life — The 
American wilderness — Indians — Adventures. 

CHAPTER IV. 
Washington's University ... 46 

Early education of Washington — Xenophon, Plu- 
tarch, Fenelon, Goethe — Pioneer population — 
Jacques Cartier — Indians in Virginia — Expansion of 
colonial life — Outdoor life — Death of Lawrence 
Washington — George accompanies him to Bar- 
badoes — Small-pox — Inherits brother's estates — 
"The Strenuous Life" — A "King George's man" — 
The French — First American congress — The Mon- 
ongahela and Alleghany — The Ohio — Fort Erie 
— Washington sent by Dinwiddie to negotiate with 
the French — Character of Dinwiddie — Expansion of 
France — Washington's account of his mission — 
The journey — A striking story — Its educational 
value — Lieutenant-Colonel — His address to the Half- 
King — A pioneer diplomat — Indian methods — The 
Scotch-Irish — Self-educated soldiers. 

CHAPTER V. 
Prologue to a Forest Tragedy . . 64 

Inclination to war — Dangers — French aggressions 
— Fort Duquesne — Dinwiddie's selection of Wash- 
ington and Fry — Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle — 
Diplomacy of the i8th century — The Georgian Age 
— The Ohio Company — The Bourbon Alliance — 
Washington's brothers Lawrence and Augustine — 



Contents ix 

Salary of Washington — Coming of Braddock — Din- 
widdie's instructions — Col. Fry — Trent — Washing- 
ton first in command after Fry's death — Hardships — 
Washington's description of them — Death of the 
French commander — The Half-King — Consequences 
of the French invasion — Dinwiddie's account of 
the defeat — Washington captured at Fort Necessity 
— Letter to his brother — The London Magazine — ^ 
Alarm of the colonies — Power of France and Eng- 
land — The two fleets sail — Braddock sails for Vir- 
ginia — His presentiment — Franklin's advice to him 
— ^A "milk-maid's dream" — Council of governors 
— Franklin's assistance — Franklin and Washington 
contrasted. 



CHAPTER VI. 

In the Tragical Wood . ... 86 

Washington appointed aide to Braddock — Corre- 
spondence thereon — ^The expedition starts — Delays 
— Ignorance of the commanders — Hewing the way 
— Strategic mistakes — Parkman describes the march 
— Braddock ambuscaded — What Washington says 
of the attack — Braddock' s numbers — Indian sub- 
tlety — Horrors of the defeat — Massacre of the Eng- 
lish — Braddock killed — Retreat of the English — 
Washington's letters on the Battle of the Mononga- 
hela. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Widow Custis ..... 103 

The fate of Braddock — Humiliation of Washington 
— Franklin on the British regulars — Washington 
appointed Colonel — His remuneration — Distress of 
the times — Washington's style as a writer — Frontier- 



X Contents 

bred commanders — War against France — The Shen- 
andoah Valley — Atkin put over Washington — Or- 
ders against profanity and drunkenness — Straits of 
the inhabitants — Condition of the frontier — "The 
Destroyer of Cities" — Washington becomes the 
popular toast — Lord Loudon — The census of Vir- 
ginia at this time — Dinwiddie leaves for England — 
111 health of Washington — Meets the Widow Custis 
— His letter — Her character and appearance — Her 
family and first husband — Courtship and marriage 
described by her grandson — Old St. Peter's — Mrs. 
Carrington describes Mrs. Washington — Two views 
of Mrs. Washington — Theory of John Adams — Date 
of the marriage — Life at Mount Vernon and "The 
White House." 

CHAPTER VIIL 
Arcady , ...... 125 

Mount Vernon — Burnaby's Travels — Washington's 
honeymoon — Washington orders articles from Lon- 
don — Letters and invoices — Arcadian life — Thanked 
by House of Burgesses — Passion for horses — Pop- 
ularity — The Washington coach — Scenes on the 
Potomac — Life in Old Virginia — Pithian's account. 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Golden Milestone .... 146 

Address of his fellow-ofhcers to Washington — 
Williamsburg before the Revolution — Lord Bote- 
tourt — Society at the Middle Plantation — Portrait 
by Peale — Fox-hunting — "Jackie" Custis — The 
Dismal Swamp scheme — Interest in navigation — 
Lord Dunmore — Old Pohick Church — Bishop 
Meade's account — Washington a vestryman — 
His belief in Christianity — A communicant — Death 
of Miss Custis. 



Contents xi 

CHAPTER X. 
Old Williamsburg . . . . . 163 

Virginia's three capitals — Jamestown — Williams- 
burg described by Burnaby — Lossing's account — 
William and Mary College — The Palace — The Gar- 
dens — Bruton Church and the Powder Horn — Hugh 
Jones's description of the town — The Ciphers "VF. " 
and "M." — The Capitol — Social life — ^Jefferson's 
account of the removal of the capital to Richmond 
— Jefferson's career at William and Mary College 
— Foundation of the latter — Sir William Berkeley's 
opinion — Distinguished graduates of the college 
— Influence of Williamsburg — A miniature court — 
Indian education — The Washingtons go to Williams- 
burg — ^The Burgesses — "Sons of Liberty" — Patrick 
Henry, his early life — Contrast between Washington, 
Jefferson, and Henry — The Williamsburg spirit — 
"The Heart of Rebellion" — At Richmond — Fire at 
Williamsburg — The "Knights of the Golden Horse 
Shoe " — John Esten Cooke's account of Williamsburg 
— Bishop Meade on Williamsburg — Old Bruton 
Church — The "Phi Beta Kappa" Society and the 
students — LordDunmore's message to the Burgesses. 

CHAPTER XL 

The New Forces ..... iqi 

Washington's letters on the Stamp Act — The repeal 
of the Act — An engrossing topic — John Adams' opin- 
ion — Unrest in America — Colonisation of the 
country different in different places — Virginia and 
Massachusetts — Patrick Henry — The Age of Doubt 
— The Faust-poem symbolises the situation — 
Change in the air — Impatience of the colonies — 
Spirit of the wilderness — Physical and intellectual 
restlessness — Beginnings of literature — Pamphlets 
— The year 1763 — The Treaty of Paris — English 
and French in America — Consequences of the treaty 
— Expenses of government — Walpole on France — 



xii Contents 

Growth of British rule in America — The Indians — 
The poHcy of France — Difificulties of the colonial 
system — Revenue Acts, etc. — The Navigation Act — 
The billeting of soldiers on the colonists — Character- 
istics of the American commonwealths — Growth of 
freedom — Grenville's policy of exclusive trade with 
England — The "Sea Guard" — George III sanctions 
the policy — The British navy becomes a police force 
to prevent contraband trade — Stamps introduced — 
Rights of American legislative bodies — February, 
1765, the Stamp Act passes, providing revenue in 
America — Lord Bute and Charles Townshend de- 
vise measures to raise revenue — Taxation without 
representation — Standing army for America — Vari- 
ous measures suggested by Stamp Act at last 
resolved upon — Grenville's part in it. 

CHAPTER XII. 
"The Cockatrice's Egg" . . . .214 

Horace Walpole on the Stamp Act — Patrick 
Henry's Virginia Resolutions — The "Treason" anec- 
dote — The "Day-Star of the Revolution" — The 
"Member from Louisa" — The "Parsons' Case" re- 
called — The vote — Henry's own account of the 
origin of the "Resolves" — Madison's doubts — 
Washington's letters on the situation — To George 
Mason — "Boycotting" English goods — Mason's an- 
swer: pleads for reciprocity — Washington's letter 
to a London business house — ^To Bryan Fairfax — 
The tea-tax — ^Affairs at Boston under Gage — Op- 
pression of Parliament — "The crisis has arrived" 
— Arrival of the tea-ships. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

''The Deadly Tea Chest" . . . 240 

Watchwords of Revolution — Tea the symbol — 

Tea-drinking in the i8th century — Fiske on tea — 



Contents xiil 

Ensuing discontent — New England at this time: its 
character — Massachusetts and its pecuHarities — 
Love of pohtics and idealism — ^John Harvard and 
his college — Contrast between Harvard and William 
and Mary College — A group of celebrated men — 
Effect of the Virginia Resolutions — Troops arrive 
— The Boston "Massacre" — Committees of Cor- 
respondence, circular letters, etc. — The Tea-party of 
December, 1774 — Sam Adams: his influence — New 
England character at this time. 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Struggle Begins ... 256 

The cup runs over — Grievances of a decade — ' ' Eng- 
land has long arms" — Views of Fox, Burke, and 
Chatham — Jefferson's opinion of the causes of the 
war — The Boston Port Bill — Excitement spreads 
— The Fairfax County "Resolves" — Gaiety at Wil- 
liamsburg — Day of fasting — Lord Dunmore dis- 
misses Burgesses — Delegates appointed to a Congress 
at Philadelphia — The Virginia delegates, Wadiington 
among them — Grievances rehearsed — John Adams' 
opinion — Congress assembles, continues seven weeks 
in session — Adjourns to meet next year — Its charac- 
ter — Preparations for war — Convention at Rich- 
mond in 1775 — Henry's words, "Give me liberty or 
give me death!" — The clash at Lexington, April 
19th — Paul Revere — "Rape of the Gunpowder" at 
Williamsburg — Congress convenes a second time at 
Philadelphia, May loth — Washington elected com- 
mander-in-chief of American forces — His letter to 
Mrs. Washington — Colonial troops assemble near 
Boston — The words of Chatham — Inaction of the 
British — Character of colonial troops — ^Anecdote 
of American marksman — Battle of Bunker Hill, 
June 17, 1775 — Lack of discipline — Losses in the 
battle — Siege of Boston — Washington's headquar- 
ters at *'Craigie House" — Declines salary — Con- 



xiv Contents 

sends arms and officers — La Fayette, De Kalb, Kos- 
ciusko arrive — Pulaski, Steuben, De Grasse, D'Es- 
taing, Rochambeau — Events of 1777 — Disaster to 
Burgoyne — His Indian allies — Burgoyne's character 
— The Adirondacks in summer — At Saratoga — Gates 
and Schuyler — Battle of Bennington — Surrender of 
Burgoyne, Oct. 17, 1777 — Arnold and Schuyler — 
The former's character — Baroness Reidesel's account 
— Schuyler's magnanimity — At the South, end of 
1777 — Sir William Howe leaves New York secretly 
and lands 18,000 troops near the Elk River 
and captures Philadelphia — Brandywine — Franklin's 
opinion — British forces divided — La Fayette's de- 
scription of the patriot army — Effects of the capture 
of Burgoyne and of Philadelphia — France acknow- 
ledges the independence of the United States. 

CHAPTER XVI. 
On to Yorktown . . . . .312 

Valley Forge: 1778 — Despair of the Americans — 
Steuben and La Fayette : their accounts — The Tories 
— News of the French treaty — Charles Lee — A 
foreigner's description of Washington — The "Spur- 
ious Letters" — Intrigues of the Conway Cabal — 
Sir Henry Clintoii evacuates Philadelphia in June, 
1778 — Defeat of the English at Monmouth — The 
traitor Lee — La Fayette's account — A gleam of light 
— Philadelphia again the capital — Thacher describes 
the General — Condition of the currency — Washing- 
ton's letters to Harrison and Nelson — Winter- 
quarters in 1779 at Middlebrook and Elizabethton 
— Letter of Franklin's daughter — Defence of the 
Hudson — The French fleet — Conduct of the Tories 
and Hessians and Indians — The French minister 
Luzerne: his opinion of Washington — Rochambeau's 
fleet comes — British Southern campaign — Charles- 
ton falls — The two Indies: contrast — Weakness of 
Congress — Washington thereon — The treason of 



Contents xv 

temporary accounts of Washington — His dispatches 
to Congress — Lack of money and ammunition — 
Washington, FrankHn, and Jefferson originally 
opposed to separation — Army divided into three 
corps — Wilkes' petition — Arnold, Allen, Schuyler, 
and Montgomery in Canada — Death of Montgomery 
at Quebec — First flag of the Union unfurled, Jan- 
uary I, 1776: description — March 20, 1776, Ameri- 
cans enter Boston — Lord North's "Manifesto" — 
Hessians hired — Congress thanks Washington — 
He occupies New York — Its importance — Arrival 
of Lord Howe's fleet — The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, July 4, 1776 — Thomas Jefferson writes 
it — Its opening paragraphs. 

CHAPTER XV. 
The Heart of the Revolution . . 283 

Declaration of Independence read to troops — The 
loyalists; their sufferings — Washington's characteris- 
tics as a commander — The "Fabian Policy" — Opin- 
ions of Fiske, Green, and Thackeray — Character of 
George III : Green's opinion — Miss Burney's Diary — 
Second year of the Revolution — Southern campaign 
— British at New York — Weakness of the British 
commanders: their blunders — Autumn of 1776 — 
Tactics of Americans — Battle of Brooklyn 
Heights — Washington evacuates New York — 
Fall of Fort Washington — Desertions and 
illness — Capture of General Charles Lee — Corn- 
wallis thinks the war over — The Jersey campaign — 
Battles of Princeton and Trenton — Crossing of the 
Delaware — Howe offers terms of peace — The year 
1777: Chatham speaks against employing Indians — 
Washington favours standing army — Made dictator 
for six months — Plots against him — Never smiles — 
Congress flees from Philadelphia to Baltimore — Suf- 
ferings of the soldiers — Winter-quarters at Morris- 
town — Inertia of Howe and Comwallis — France 



xvi Contents 

Arnold: his career — Reprimanded — Major Andre 
and Arnold: their plot — Washington's position: his 
account — Capture of Andre and flight of Arnold 
— Andre hanged — Chastellux on Washington — - 
Thacher describes Andre's execution — ^Affairs at the 
South — Lincoln captured — Gates put in command 
at the South — Tories in the Carolinas — Impolicy 
of the English — Lodge's account — Errors of Gates — 
Defeat of Americans at Camden — Sumter, Corn- 
wallis, Tarleton — Comwallis trapped: compared 
with Burgoyne — Character of the Revolutionary 
"Rough Riders" — General Greene — Battle of 
Cowpens — Guilford Court House — Barbarities of 
Tarleton — Moultrie — Comwallis retreats — Marion 
and Sumter — Help of France — Robert Morris's finan- 
cial policy — French fleet at Newport blockaded 
— De Grasse sails for the Chesapeake — Allied ar- 
mies move from New York — Condition of Virginia — 
Tarleton 's raid on Charlottesville — Comwallis 
reaches Yorktown in August — Washington comes 
to take command with 16,000 troops — Dissensions 
among commanders — Comwallis invested — October 
19th he surrenders — ^The closing scene. 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The Ebbing Tide ..... 345 

Horace Walpole again — His comments on the sur- 
render of Comwallis — Tom Paine on the crisis — 
Seven years of war — Beaumarchais and Franklin 
— Vergennes, the French premier — Franklin's repu- 
tation abroad — John Adams and John Jay, his asso- 
ciates — Their mission — Death of John Parke Custis 
— Washington visits his mother — Ball at Fredericks- 
burg — Goes to Mount Vernon and Philadelphia 
— British retreat to Charleston — Its evacuation^ 
The year 1782 — Peace desired — Sir Guy Carleton 
sounds the colonies on a settlement — Proposition 
to make Washington King — Washington's indigna- 



Contents xvii 

tion — Rodney defeats De Grasse — Privateering on 
the seas — John Paul Jones' achievements — Founds 
the navy — Fears of Washington — De Broghe's de- 
scription of the Americans — Rochambeau's praise — 
Washington at forty-nine — Serious situation at 
the American camp — Armstrong's address — Gates 
treachery — Threatened mutiny. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

A "Merrie Christmas" .... 366 

Nov. 30, 1782, Prehminaries of peace signed at 
Paris — American and British commissioners — Mu- 
tinies — General Gates concerned in them — Washing- 
ton to Greene on the end of the Southern campaign ; 
to Congress ; to Hamilton — Prays for union — Writes 
to La Fayette on States' rights — Dread of disunion 
— Carleton notifies Washington of the ratification of 
peace — Letters of tliG two commanders thereon — 
First salute of 17 guns fired — A retrospect of 175 
years — The famous "Circular Letter" of Washing- 
ton : the four fundamentals of American independ- 
ence — Christian tone of the document — Trevelyan's 
account of Washington's churchmanship — His 
habit of prayer and worship— =Incident at Morris- 
town of Washington communing — Announces him- 
self a member of the Church of England — Five great 
English statesmen — Society of the Cincinnati 
founded — General Knox the founder — Washington 
its president — Opposition to it — Nov, 2, Washington 
bids farewell to his troops — Treaty of Paris between 
England and America signed at Paris Sept. 3, 1783 — 
Its ten articles — Franklin's influence — Adams and 
Jay co-operate — Lecky on Franklin — Washington 
surrenders his sword to Congress at Annapolis — ■ 
Mount Vernon memories— Thackeray's contrast be- 
tween the two Georges — The General's farewell 
words — The last solemn act — Off for Mount Vernon. 



xviii Contents 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Birth of the Constitution . . . 388 

Peace only apparent — Golden Age expected — A 
Spanish view — The great West — The Indian wars — 
George Rogers Clark and his conquest of the North- 
west Territory — Lodge's description — Patrick Henry 
apprises the Virginia Legislature of Clark's achieve- 
ment — Perils of the time — Washington to La Fay- 
ette; to General Knox — A foreigner's impression — 
Made a Mason — Improvements at Mount Vernon— r 
His life there — A Briton's account — Solicitude for his 
guests — Danger of civil war after Yorktown — 
A critical period — McMaster's view — Assertion of 
States' rights — 111 treatment of Tories — Repudiation 
of debts — Shays' Rebellion crushed by General 
Lincoln — A demoralised currency — The coins of 
1784 — The inland navigation scheme suggests the 
new Federal Union — A commercial convention 
with Maryland succeeded by a general convention 
at Philadelphia in 1787 — La Fayette's anxiety — Mar- 
shall's description of the origin of the Philadelphia 
Convention — Washington a delegate — May 2, 1787, 
the date of the Philadelphia Convention — Madison's 
letter — Federalism of Washington — Elected presi- 
dent of the Convention, which continues in session 
four and a half months — Madison's journal — Injunc- 
tion in secrecy — Clause in Madison's will as to his 
diary — "The Federal Pyramid" — Franklin's witty 
paper — Only three fail to sign the Constitution — 
The States gradually ratify the Constitution 
The Virginia Convention of 1 788 : how divided on the 
Constitution — Washington's Diary on the Conven- 
tion's work; compromise its key-note. 

CHAPTER XX. 

First Citizen of the United States . . 422 

Washington choice of the people as President — His 

reluctance — Death of Mary Washington — Custis 



Contents xix 

describes it — John Adams Vice-President — Diary 
of Washington — Congress assembles at New York — 
April 30, 1789: the first inauguration — The Cabinet 
— Rules of etiquette, hours, dress, etc. — The soldier 
becomes the statesman — Two great measures: neu- 
trality in foreign troubles and moral alliance with 
Great Britain — The first Thanksgiving Day and the 
first census — Ceremony at visits — Philadelphia be- 
comes seat of government till 1800 — Washington 
City planned and laid out b}^ Washington, Major 
L' Enfant, and others — His illness — Makes tours in 
New England and the South — John Hancock visits 
him — Presents from Europe: portraits, statues, 
busts, etc. — Congress and the Supreme Court — Fiscal 
policy of the United States — The Whiskey Rebellion 
in Pennsylvania, 1794 — The Golden Age of the 
Republic — Erskine's Eulogy — Indian policy — St. 
Clair's disaster in the West— Close of the first ad- 
ministration — Washington re-elected — Letters of 
Hamilton, Jefferson, and Randolph urging him to 
accept — Faith in Providence — John Adams again 
elected Vice-President — The second administra- 
tion — The French Revolution — Tension between 
France and England — War declared — Neutrality of 
the United States proclaimed — Excitement— Britain 
refuses to surrender the frontier fortresses — Jay 
negotiates a treaty with England, in 1 795-6 — Genet's 
meddling course — Fluctuations in Cabinet — Army 
and Navy — ^Treaty with Spain — Severe criticism 
of the President — His bitter resentment — The 
"Spurious Washington Letters" again — Retires in 
1797 — Results of his second administration — His 
Farewell Address — Wilson's opinion of it — Adams 
succeeds him — Washington appointed commander- 
in-chief of the army against France. 



XX 



Contents 



CHAPTER XXI. 
The Glimmering Taper" . . " . . 449 

"Farmer Washington" — His occupations at Mount 
Vernon — The "Parting Guest" — Last days — Insults 
of France — ^The expiring century — Illness and death. 




ILLUSTRATIONS 



GEORGE WASHINGTON . . Fl'Olltispiece 

From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON .... I4 

From the painting by Gilbert Stuart. 

THE FIRST CABINET ..... 32 

From an old print. 

MOUNT VERNON ....... 50 

From a photograph. 

Washington's autographs .... 68 
benjamin franklin in 1779 .... 84 

From an oil-painting in the possession of the His- 
torical Society of Pennsylvania. 

GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM .... I02 

From the painting by H. I, Thompson, in the 
State House, Hartford, Conn. 

BATTLE OF PRINCETON DEATH OF MERCER . II4 

From the painting by Col. John Trumbull. 

INTERVIEW OF HOWE's MESSENGER WITH WASH- 
INGTON . . 130 

After the painting by M. A. Wageman. 



xxu 



Illustrations 



WASHINGTON MEDAL (1776) 

MARTHA WASHINGTON .... 

From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. 

WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE 
After the painting by E, Leutze. 

GEORGE WASHINGTON ..... 

From the painting by Rembrandt Peale. Repro 
duced by permission of C. Klackner, N. Y 
Copyright, 1894. 

Washington's coat-of-arms 

washington at monmouth 

From a design by F. O. C. Darley. 

surveyor's manuscript .... 

washington entering new york city . 

From the engraving by A. H. Ritchie after the 
original painting by F. O. C. Darley. 

WASHINGTON ARCH, NEW YORK CITY . 

JOHN ADAMS ....... 

From a steel engraving, 

carpenters' hall, PHILADELPHIA 

Wherein met the first Continental Congress, I774- 

MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES LEE .... 
From an English engraving published in 1776. 

MAJOR-GENERAL NATHANAEL GREENE 

From the painting by Col. John Trumbull. 

Washington's headquarters at newburgh- 
on-the-hudson 

THE BRANDYWINE AT CHADD'S FORD 



PAGE 
140 

160 



196 

208 

218 
226 



240 
248 

2C4 

276 

280 

284 
306 



Illustrations 



XXI 11 



PAGE 

THE SURRENDER OF YORKTOWN . . . 316 

From an old print. 

WASHINGTON AT TRENTON, JANUARY 2D, 1777 . 328 

From the engraving by Daggett after the original 
painting by Colonel Trumbull. 

THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE .... ;^;^6 

From a French print, 1781. 

JOHN JAY '350 

From a steel engraving. 

MAJOR-GENERAL BENJAMIN LINCOLN . . . 354 

From a steel engraving. 

MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY KNOX .... 396 

From the painting by Gilbert Stuart, in the 
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

FRAUNCES' TAVERN 4OO 

From an old print. 

WASHINGTON MONUMENT ..... 428 

Looking across the " Flats." 




GEORGE WASHINGTON 



CHAPTER I 

AT THE FIRESIDE 

HEINE'S fanciful story of the wondrous cactus 
that slumbered a hundred years, and then 
sent up a strange and dazzling flower came lit- 
erally true in the thorny evolution of American 
history. The flowering of Washington out of the 
cactus-like environment of American life in the 
eighteenth century is one of those psychological 
problems not wholly explicable on the ground of 
environment alone. Heredity, of course, had a 
crowning part in it. The strenuous character of the 
race has evolved in hundreds of years of struggle 
with men and things. When the brothers, John and 
Lawrence Washington, first emigrated to Virginia 
in Cromwell's day, the character of the strain had 
already been stamped with ineffaceable marks. The 
Transatlantic Virginian was the Transatlantic Eng- 
lishman transformed into something more enduring, 
more tenacious, more granite-like in its hardness by 
incessant battling w^ith aboriginal conditions; with 
the Redskin, with the wild wilderness, with the 
merchant adventurers, the London Companies, the 



2 George Washington 

wrangling burgesses, with governors like Sir Wil- 
liam Berkeley and soldiers like those prominent in 
Bacon's Rebellion. The incessant friction of colonial 
life in its semi-civilized stages sharpened the blunter 
specimens of English urban and civic life to a 
keenness and a fighting edge which, transmitted 
from father to son, became fixed in a type, and ex- 
panded into a character that was strangely com- 
posite, that drew into itself many elements, and 
became at last a moral and intellectual fabric of 
enduring strength and originality. What differen- 
tiated the Greek from all others was probably the 
Sea that shone and shimmered into his life at every 
angle, and fed the life of his soul with its subtle 
influences. What differentiated the Transatlantic 
Englishman from his island brother was the For- 
est with its vast stretches of mysterious, unex- 
plored territory filled witl a subtle foe whose 
activity was perpetual. 

The Redskin thus became a prime factor in early 
American education. The differentiations went on 
from the time '' the Kingdom of Virginia " sprang 
out of the soft Western seas, and the land of the 
Powhatans and the Lady Pocahontas tickled the im- 
agination of the poetic Elizabethans. A grave, seri- 
ous, solemn, efficacious type was evolved, which 
waited a hundred, or a hundred and fifty years be- 
fore its eyes twinkled in the sunny faces of William 
Byrd or Benjamin Franklin. The first two hundred 
years were a determined struggle for existence, 
along a coast-line 1800 miles and more in length, 
as it stretched in sinuous course from Boston to 



At the Fireside 3 

St. Augustine and New Orleans, the edges of a 
mighty volume whose inner pages were writ large 
in labyrinthine wilderness, unexplored mountain, 
river, and savannah, and the endless vicissitudes 
of frontier life. Life on a gigantic scale opened 
before the dazzled eyes of John Smith, La Salle, 
Hernando de Soto, Marquette, and the Jesuit 
Fathers, and, unawed by its immensity, the joyous, 
tireless explorers pushed on up river and down lake, 
over mountain and through primeval forest, until 
their eyes fairly blazed with enthusiasm as their 
tongues told, in Purchas and Hakluyt and in the 
Jesuit journals, of the wonders of this Western 
" Orient " which many of them still supposed to be 
the golden Cathay or shadowy Cipango of Columbus 
and the poets. 

It has required four hundred years and more to 
send a thin wave of population over this colossal 
region, and it will require four hundred more to peo- 
ple it as densely as the European homes from which 
the early navigators and immigrants sprang. 

The triumphant conquest of the edges of these 
unimaginable lands occupied one hundred and fifty 
years, in the course of which, a new and noble type 
of immigrant manhood and womanhood saw the 
light. The petulant spirit of the five millions of 
Elizabethans, " cribb'd, cabin'd and confined " with- 
in the narrow limits of the British Isles, burst forth 
with overwhelming gaiety, as if in a huge carnival 
celebration, and, despite hunger, starvation, death 
in a thousand cruel forms, martyrdom in strange 



4 Georg-e Washing-ton 

unheard-of ways, torture and torment, continued 
to pour forth in numberless streams until the coast- 
line of the New World grew into a wonderfully 
picturesque and powerful duplicate of the European, 
like, yet marvellously unlike, in its varying features 
and phenomena. The eyes that look out from the 
old portraits belonging to this time have a singular 
depth and intensity, as if their owners beheld visions 
never before imagined by the commonplace dames 
and cavaliers across the water. Religion acquires 
an incandescent glow unknown in the older coun- 
tries, and enshrines itself in temples and tabernacles 
erected on the borders of the wilderness, in the tim- 
bered town, among the plantation oaks, or appears 
passionately supplicating mercy in the quaint intro- 
ductory clauses of old yellow wills and ancient vestry 
books. 

It was in the beautiful and romantic Virginia of 
this time, the Virginia of Indian unrest and semi- 
civilisation, that George Washington was born at 
the old homestead of Wakefield, in Westmoreland 
County, February the Twenty-Second (New Style), 
1732, about ten in the morning. 

Wakefield was one of the homes of the Washing- 
ton family at that time, in Eastern Virginia, and 
there this little household (increasing year by year) 
lived until the house burned down, from the care- 
lessness, it seems, of good Madam Washington who 
took it into her head to burn brush and stubble raked 
together in the garden, and, incidentally, burnt her 
home to the ground. The servants fought the fire 



At the Fireside 5 

heroically, but in vain, saving only a few articles 
of furniture and the ancient copy of Matthew Hale's 
Contemplations, Moral and Divine, now said to be 
at Mount Vernon. 

This volume had belonged to Augustine Wash- 
ington's first wife, Jane Butler, and descended to 
the second, in the easy and natural way of second 
marriages so prevalent in early Virginia. 

What manner of house it was, where this Vir- 
ginia family passed their earlier life, may be con- 
jectured from the imaginative reconstruction of its 
details, found in the pages of the charming his- 
torian, Marion Harland: 

" The blunted point of the triangle, formed by the 
creeks that furnished fat low-grounds on two sides of 
Augustine Washington's plantation of Wakefield, 
rested upon the Potomac, and was a mile in width. 
Wakefield comprised a thousand acres of as fine wood 
and bottom lands as were to be found in a county ' that, 
by reason of the worth, talents, and patriotism that 
adorned it, was called the Athens of Virginia.' The 
house faced the Potomac, the lawn, sloping to the bank 
between three and four hundred yards distant from 
the * porch/ running from corner to corner of the 
dwelling. There were four rooms of fair size upon 
the first floor, the largest, in -a one-story extension at 
the back, being * the chamber.' The hip-roof above the 
main building was pierced by dormer-windows that 
lighted a large attic. At each end of the house was a 
chimney, built upon the outside of the frame dwelling, 
and of dimensions that made the latter seem dispropor- 
tionately small. Each cavernous fireplace would hold 



6 George Washing-ton 

a half cord of wood, and the leaping blaze had all 
seasons for its own in a region where river fogs at 
evening and morning were vehicles of the dreaded 
* ague and fever.' About the fireplace in the parlour, 
were the blue Dutch tiles much affected in the decora- 
tive architecture of the time. What a priceless scrap of 
bric-a-brac to a modern collector, would be one of 
those same enamelled squares^ bedight with a repre- 
sentation of ' Abraham's Offering,' or ' Moses Break- 
ing the Tables of the Law,' the tents of Israel, like a 
row of sharp haystacks, almost touching his knees, 
although ostensibly dwarfed in perspective until the 
whole camp was smaller than the tablets he hurled to 
earth ! — the tiles that once reflected rosily the thought- 
ful face of the young wife, and gave distorted images 
of the blonde giant, her nominal lord and master, 
that, by and by, missed the musing face and slighter 
figure for a time, and then showed a double picture, — 
a visage paler and sweeter than of old, bent over the 
baby that was, from the beginning, the image of his 
mother. In the one-storied chamber the Moses of the 
New World was born, and the mother nursed the 
goodly child upon her bosom, in gladness and pride of 
heart, until the birth of the little Betty, in June, 1733. 
Between the stepmother and the two sturdy sons of 
Mr. Washington's first marriage, there existed cordial 
friendliness from the hour of her installation as mis- 
tress of the modest mansion. An elderly kinswoman 
had cared for them during their father's protracted 
absence, but, with the recollection of their own mother, 
hardly two years dead, in their memories, it spoke well 
for the little fellows, as for the new mother, that they 
yielded her respectful duty. Her early life had made 



At the Fireside 7 

every detail of country housekeeping familiar to her. 
The retinue of servants was perhaps larger than that 
at Epping Forest had been, and the appointments of 
the house may have included relics of such grand Hv- 
ing as had befitted Cave Castle, and went well with 
the stories, told over the logs on winter nights, of 
court-visits and royal preferm.ents. Apostles of De- 
mocracy, though the Washingtons called themselves, 
they were ingrain aristocrats — the greatest of them 
not excepted." ^ 

The deepest glance into these earliest years of 
Madam Washington's wife- and widowhood, and 
the boyhood and youth of George, has been cast by 
George Washington Parke Custis, adopted grand- 
son of the chieftain, to whose Recollections and Pri- 
vate Memoirs of Washington all later historians, 
from Irving and Lossing down, are indebted for 
their intimate details. Custis saw and remembered 
the great dame but dimly, personally, being 
a boy only four years old when she died; but he 
lived at Mount Vernon until he was nineteen, and 
gathered what he records from the lips of the Wash- 
ingtons and Lewises themselves. 

The illustrious lady was just such a woman as 
one might have imagined to have been most perfectly 
suited to be the mother of an unannounced hero — 
plain, dignified, sincere, strong in the possession of 
the homely and home-like virtues, absolutely devoid 
of vanity or ostentation, without frivolity or femi- 
nine captiousness, reticent to a degree, and so free 

^ The Story of Mary Washington, by Marion Harland. 



8 George Washing-ton 

from self -consciousness that she did not hesitate, 
without any sense of false shame or humiliation, to 
receive Lafayette and his distinguished company, 
rake in hand, arrayed in the unpretentious homespun 
and sun-bonnet of the time. Her calm placidity of 
temperament was as if carved out of marble, or 
moulded into the antique lineaments of Judith or 
Miriam. No exultant cry ever broke from her lips, 
no matter how dazzling might have been the distinc- 
tions heaped, in flattering phrase, on his head, from 
the time when, by a kind of irrepressible buoyancy, 
the young son began to rise and to win one colonial 
dignity after another, as major, lieutenant-colonel, 
colonel, burgess, commander-in-chief, president: all 
seemed, to this undemonstrative woman, a matter 
of course, just as it should be. Though endowed 
with this apparent equability of temperament, Mary 
Washington's nature glowed with a suppressed fer- 
vour which transmitted itself to her son, and in him 
became power of endurance, passion for command, 
ambition to do and to dare in the colonial wars, 
spontaneous assumption of leadership, and the nat- 
ural and easy command of men. Ardour, thus spir- 
itualised, coins itself into the noblest ideals, into the 
tireless feet that explore the sources of the Nile, into 
the pen that writes the " Cosmos," into the exqui- 
site harmonies that well up in the soul of Beethoven. 
Whether it take a martial or a musical, an intel- 
lectual or a physical turn, the fire that burns inward, 
the vestal flame on the altar of the soul, must be 
there, radiant, if still, not noisy and crackling. 



At the Fireside g 

Everybody who came near either Washington or 
his mother felt the suppressed glow that was in them. 
Intense heat sometimes has the effect of cold. Mil- 
ton's remarkable epithet, " burns frore," aptly de- 
scribes the burning frost of Washington's nature, 
the fiery chill that embarrassed his companions even 
in their most intimate intercourse with him, the 
latent fire that sometimes, though rarely, leapt to 
his lips in impassioned phrases. 

This notable characteristic came from Mary Ball, 
and shines forth in many of the anecdotes related by 
Custis and her grandson, Lawrence Washington of 
Chotank. Says the latter : 

" I was often [at the Washington home] with 
George, his playmate, schoolmate, and young man's 
companion. Of the mother I was ten times more 
afraid than I ever was of my own parents. She awed 
me in the midst of her kindness, for she was, indeed, 
truly kind. I have often been present with her sons, 
proper, tall fellows too, and we were all as mute as 
mice ; and even now, when time has whitened my locks, 
and I am the grand-parent of a second generation, I 
could not behold that remarkable woman without feel- 
ings it is impossible to describe. Whoever has seen 
that awe-inspiring air and manner so characteristic in 
the Father of his Country, will remember the matron 
as she appeared, when the presiding genius of her well- 
ordered household, commanding and being obeyed." 

Custis, in the odd Johnsonian English of the 
early nineteenth century, thus describes her personal 
features : 



lo George Washington 

'' In her person, the matron was of middle size, 
and well-proportioned ; her features pleasing, yet 
strongly marked. It is not the happiness of the author 
to remember her, having only seen her with infant 
eyes. The sister of the Chief, he perfectly well remem- 
bers. She was a most majestic-looking woman, and 
so strikingly like the brother, that it was a matter of 
frolic to throw a cloak around her and placing a mili- 
tary hat on her head, such was her amazing resem- 
blance, that on her appearance, battalions would have 
presented arms and senates risen to do homage to the 
Chief." 

The death of Augustine Washington, in 1743, 
when George was only eleven years old, broke up 
the happy Wakefield life and left the lady a widow 
at the early age of thirty-five, with a family of four 
sons and one daughter, besides the two sons of her 
husband's marriage with Jane Butler. Her admi- 
rable relations with these step-children incidentally 
throw a pleasing light on Mary Washington's home 
life, and the affection of Lawrence (one of these 
sons) for his half-brother George illustrates the 
cordial feeling among its various members, which 
was a distinguishing mark of the whole kith and 
clan of the Washingtons. 

The idyll of Wakefield must have been almost 
as simple and unaffected, as devoid of incident and 
as undramatic, as that of the famous vicar painted 
by the contemporary Goldsmith. An earnest, seri- 
ous, yet delightsome boyhood seems to have been 
that of Washington : hunting, riding, shooting, fish- 



At the Fireside 1 1 

ing, all healthy open-air exercises, filled its busy 
hours of morning and afternoon ; and the few hours 
dedicated to intellectual work resulted in imparting 
to the boy, first at his mother's knee, then at the 
hands of Master Hobby, the sexton, and, later, at 
an " old-field " academy in or near Fredericksburg, 
the rudiments of a plain English education. Essen- 
tially a man of action, Washington never wholly rid 
himself of the defects and limitations of an early 
imperfect education. " William and Mary " and 
Princeton were then flourishing institutions, not 
impossibly distant from Fredericksburg, yet Wash- 
ington was not sent to these institutions as Jefferson 
and Madison were, only a decade later. Latin and 
French, the not unusual polite accomplishments of 
the day in the colonies north of Virginia, were prac- 
tically unknown to the Virginia schoolboy whose 
business-like turn of mind, influenced perhaps by 
its knowledge of the family's large possession^ in 
land, fixed itself almost instinctively on mathe- 
matics, and, among the various branches of that 
science, chose surveying as the most remunerative. 

In the same manner, Thomas Jefferson, Rogers 
Clark, and John Adams — not to mention the omnis- 
cient Franklin — directed their early faculties, anc 
trained them by the surveyor's instruments of pre- 
cision to those habits of exact thought which so 
signally distinguished three, at least, of these early 
typical Americans, and helped to make them tower 
above their contemporaries in scientific attainments. 

Intimacy wnth the field and forest, with the flow- 



12 George Washington 

ing expanse of river and estuary, with the mighty 
stretches of virgin wood that travelled in almost lim- 
itless undulations towards the Great Lakes and the 
Mississippi, thus entered naturally and indispen- 
sably into the lives of the young Americans, and 
evoked in them the self-reliance, fearlessness, per- 
sonal hardihood, and undaunted courage character- 
istic of the men of that day. 

If there is one feature more than another which 
astonishes the enervated idler of our days, it is the 
enormous personal sacrifices made by the men and 
women of the American eighteenth century, the ex- 
haustless stores of physical strength required by the 
itineraries described in the memoirs of the period, 
the patience and prowess absolutely demanded by 
the smallest journey into the wilderness, and the 
Spartan toleration of hunger, fatigue, want, and dis- 
ease^ entailed by birth on this primitive society. 

The softer courtesies of life were, however, not 
wholly neglected in the young Washington's early 
education. 

" Among the manuscript books of George Wash- 
ington, preserved in the State Archives at Washing- 
ton City, the earliest bears the date, written in it by 
himself, 1745. Washington was born February 11, 
1 73 1, O. S., so that when writing in this book he was 
either near the close of his fourteenth, or in his fif- 
teenth year. It is entitled Forms of Writing, and 
has thirty folio pages ; the contents, all in his boyish 
handwriting, are sufficiently curious. Amid copied 
forms of exchange, bonds, receipts, sales, and similar 



At the Fireside 13 

exercises, occasionally in ornate penmanship, there are 
poetic selections, among them lines of a religious tone 
on * True Happiness.' But the great interest of the 
book centres in the pages headed : ' Rules of Civility 
and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation.' 
The book had been gnawed at the bottom by Mount 
Vernon mice, before it reached the State Archives, 
and nine of the no Rules have thus suffered, the 
sense of several being lost. 

" The Rules possess so much historic interest that 
it seems surprising that none of Washington's bio- 
graphers or editors should have given them to the 
world. Washington Irving, in his Life of IV asking- 
ton, excites interest in them by a tribute, but does not 
quote even one. Sparks quotes fifty-seven, but inex- 
actly, and with his usual literary manipulation." ^ 

It was in 1739 that Captain Augustine Wash- 
ington moved to Fredericksburg, a little town on 
the Rappahannock, founded in 1727, by Colonel 
Willis, husband of Washington's aunt and god- 
mother. The family before this had resided, di- 
rectly after George's birth, at Hunting Creek (after- 
wards Mount Vernon), having left Wakefield for 
that purpose. Mr. Conway establishes the fact that 
Washington's earliest recollections were with the 
beautiful estate belonging to his half-brother Law- 
rence, and named by him '' Mount Vernon," in 
honour of the gallant English admiral under whom 
he had served at Carthagena and Porto Bello. 

" Among the shiploads of convicts probably im- 

^ M. D. Conway's George Washington's Rules of Civility, 
1890, pp. 7-8. 



14 George Washing-ton 

ported for labour purposes by Captain Augustine 
Wasliington, was one who had scholarly attainments, 
possibly a political exile, to whom, after his mother, 
Washington owed his earliest teaching. Some among 
these convicts were learned Scotchmen, men of rank 
and distinction, exiles for conscience' sake after Crom- 
well's insurrection and the return of the Stuarts ; they 
were not necessarily criminals. Indentured servants 
and ' Redemptioners ' (men who purchased their free- 
dom, in exchange for their passage money over the 
Atlantic) were often persons of some literary accom- 
plishment, who taught the children of their employers 
and thus ingratiated themselves as schoolmasters, 
clerks, bookkeepers, and the like with the high-born 
Virginia families. The classical scholar need not be 
reminded of Epictetus, ^sop, and Horace for exam- 
ples of slaves and freedmen who have become the 
world's most celebrated and most admired teachers. 

" Probably the school founded by James Marye 
[continues Mr. Conway] was the first in the New 
World in which good manners were seriously taught. 
Nay, where is there any such school to-day? Just 
this one colonial school, by the good fortune of having 
for its master or superintendent, an ex-Jesuit French 
scholar, we may suppose instructed in civility ; and 
out of that school, it was little more than a village, 
came an exceptionally large number of eminent men. 
In that school, three American Presidents received 
their early education — Washington, Madison, and 
Monroe. 

'' In the manuscript of Colonel Byrd Willis, already 
referred to (loaned me by his granddaughter, Mrs. 
Tayloe, of Fredericksburg), he says: 'My father. 




THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
From the painting by Gilbert Stuart. 



At the Fireside 15 

Lewis Willis, was a schoolmate of General Washing- 
ton, his cousin, who was two years his senior. He 
spoke of the General's industry and assiduity at school 
as very remarkable. Whilst his brother and other 
boys at play-time were at bandy and other games, he 
was behind the door, ciphering. But one youthful 
ebullition is handed down while at that school, and 
that was romping with one of the largest girls. This 
was so unusual that it excited no little comment among 
the other lads.' It is also handed down that, in boy- 
hood, this great soldier, though never a prig, had no 
fights, and was often summoned to the playground 
as a peacemaker, his arbitration in dispute being al- 
ways accepted." 

The admirable w^isdom of the no '' Rules of Ci- 
vility " must have sunk deeply into the heart and 
soul of this young scholar in a time when books were 
few and scarce, and maxims such as these had time 
to germinate, flower, and fruit in the life and conduct 
of the susceptible pupil. The last of these useful 
maxims became the guiding-star of Washington's 
whole career : 

*' Labour to keep alive in your Breast that little 
Spark of Celescial fire called Conscience." 

This noble saying, due to the wisdom of the Jesuit 
Fathers among whom the Rev. James Marye had 
been educated, and of whose organisation he was 
once a member, became incarnate in the life of the 
illustrious American whose boyish hand transcribed 
it in quaint co]iy-book style and orthography. " The 
Rules of Civility " is, in its w^ay, a volume on Moral 



1 6 George Washington 

Philosophy whose assimilation and digestion are ac- 
centuated at every point of Washington's public and 
private life. 

The Hebrew nation, in its Books of Wisdom, had 
condensed the marvellous essence of a worldly phi- 
losophy which has signally influenced its entire des- 
tiny and, through it, the fates and fortunes of every 
code of modern jurisprudence. 

French urbanity, on the other hand, concentrates 
itself in these golden maxims and, by a happy antici- 
pation, forehadows the profound influence of France 
on American affairs. It is a prophecy of Lafayette. 



CHAPTER II 

GREENWAY COURT ! AN IDYLL OF THE SUMMER 
ISLES 

OVER the spacious plantations of Virginia was 
scattered, in Washington's youth, a popula- 
tion of some 80,000 or 90,000 men, women, and 
children who had come thither in miscellaneous 
ways, some by birth, some from over seas, as Bohe- 
mians and wanderers on the face of the earth, some 
urged by love of money, traffic, or adventure, others 
fired by the imaginative pictures of the poet-travel- 
lers, Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, or Columbus. 
One hundred and twenty-five years had sped swiftly 
by since the first ship cast anchor off Jamestown, 
and the first load of anxious immigrants began 
gathering up their old-world belongings and drag- 
ging them laboriously and cautiously ashore. The 
clock of the Stuarts, which ticked so loudly in 1607, 
had subsided into the even-paced timepieces of the 
Georges, two of whom had already occupied the 
throne of the mother-country, three thousand miles 
away. The two or three little fissures, made in the 
mountain-wall of the unexplored New World at 
Hampton Roads, at Plymouth, at Manhattan, at 
Philadelphia, had widened into sluice-gates through 
which poured ever-broadening streams of European 
life and trade and population, that up every creek 

17 



1 8 George Washington 

and river and valley veined the land, like a human 
face, with the arteries, of Eastern civilisation, and 
everywhere sowed sinuous lines of settlements from 
the ocean edge to the great inland oceans of fresh 
water that stretched far to the north-west. 

Of this expanding " England in Virginia," Colo- 
nel Robert Beverley, its picturesque colonial histo- 
rian, wrote in 1705 ^ : 

" The Country being thus taken into the King's 
Hands, his Majesty was pleased to establish the Con- 
stitution to be by a Governour, Council and Assembly. 
. . . This was a Constitution according to their Hearts' 
Desire, and Things seem'd now to go on in a happy 
Course for Encouragement of the Colony. People 
flock'd over thither apace ; and, not minding any thing 
but to be Masters of great Tracts of Land, they planted 
themselves separately on their several Plantations." 

It is no wonder that the land-loving *' American " 
of that day distinguished himself by taking up these 
enormous tracts of land when we read on in Bever- 
ley : 

" Here they enjoy all the benefits of a warm Sun, 
and by their shady Groves, are protected from its In- 
convenience. Here all their Senses are entertain'd 
with an endless Succession of Native Pleasures. Their 
Eyes are ravished with the Beauties of naked Nature. 
Their Ears are Serenaded with the perpetual murmur 
of Brooks, and the thorow-base which the Wind plays, 
when it wantons through the Trees ; the merry Birds, 
too, join their pleasing Notes to this rural Comfort; 

^ Robert Beverley's Virginia, p. 47. 



Greenway Court 19 

especially the Mock-birds, who love Society so well, 
that whenever they see Mankind, they will perch upon 
a Twigg very near them, and sing the sweetest wild 
Airs in the World : But what is most remarkable in 
these Melodious Animals, they will frequently fly at 
small distances before a Traveller warbling out their 
Notes several Miles, an end, and by their Musick, make 
a Man forget the Fatigues of his Journey. Their 
Taste is regaled with the most delicious Fruits, which 
without Art, they have in great Variety and Perfec- 
tion. And then their smell is refreshed with an eter- 
nal fragrancy of Flowers and Sweets, with which 
Nature perfumes and adorns the Woods almost the 
whole year round. Have you pleasure in a Garden? 
All things thrive in it, most surprisingly ; you Can't 
walk by a Bed of Flowers, but besides the entertain- 
ment of their Beauty, your Eyes will be saluted with 
the charming colours of the Humming Bird, which 
revels among the Flowers, and licks off the Dew and 
Honey from their tender Leaves, on which it only 
feeds. It's size is not half so large as an English 
Wren, and its colour is a glorious shining mixture of 
Scarlet, Green, and Gold. Colonel Byrd, in his Garden, 
which is the finest in that Country, has a Summer- 
House set round with the Indian Honey-Suckle, which 
all the Summer is continually full of sweet Flowers, 
in which these Birds delight exceedingly. Upon these 
Flowers, I have seen ten or a dozen of these Beautiful 
Creatures together, which sported about me so fa- 
miliarly, that with their little Wings they often fann'd 
my Face." ^ 

This delightful Virginia of bird and beast and 

* Robert Beverley's Virginia, p. 6i. 



20 Georg-e Washington 

flower emerges from fragrant clouds of tobacco- 
smoke, in the early historians, and lends itself to 
anecdote and idyllic description, of which the fol- 
lowing extract gives characteristic specimens : 

''Among other Indian Commodities, they brought 
over Some of that bewitching Vegetable, Tobacco. 
And this being the first that ever came to England, Sir 
Walter thought he could do no less than make a pres- 
ent of Some of the brightest of it to His Roial Mis- 
tress, for her own Smoaking. 

" The Queen graciously accepted of it, but finding 
her Stomach sicken after two or three Whiffs, it was 
presently whispered by the earl of Leicester's Faction, 
that Sir Walter had certainly Poison'd Her. But Her 
Majesty soon recovering her Disorder, obliged the 
Countess of Nottingham and all her Maids to Smoak 
a whole Pipe out amongst them. 

" As it happen'd some Ages before to be the fashion 
to Saunter to the Holy Land, and go upon other 
Quixot Adventures, so it was now grown the Humour 
to take a Trip to America." ^ 

This " bewitching vegetable " thus cast its spell 
over the whole lifetime of Colonial Virginia, as, 
later, after 1776, the characteristic fragrance ema- 
nated from tea. 

On the moral and intellectual side a glimpse of 
this enchanted Virginia may be got through the con- 
temporary eyes of the Rev. Hugh Jones, one of the 
Fellows of William and Mary College, and its chap- 
lain, who wrote : 

* The History of the Dividing Line, p. 5. 



Greenway Court 21 

" Virginia equals, if not exceeds, all others in Good- 
ness of Climate, Soil, Health, Rivers, Plenty, and all 
Necessaries, and Conveniences of Life: Besides she 
has, among others, these particular Advantages of her 
younger Sister Maryland, viz. Freedom from Popery, 
and the direction of Proprietors ; not but that Part of 
Virginia, which is between the Rivers Potomack and 
Rappahannock belongs to Proprietors, as to the Quit- 
Rent ; yet the Government of these Countries (called 
the Northern Neck) is under the same Regulation 
with the other Parts of the Country. 

" If New England be called a Receptacle of Dissent- 
ers, and an Amsterdam of Religion, Pennsylvania the 
Nursery of Quakers, Maryland the Retirement of 
Roman Catholicks, North Carolina the Refuge of Run- 
aways, and South Carolina the Delight of Buccaneers 
and Py rates, Virginia may be justly esteemed the hap- 
py Retreat, of true Britons and true Churchnien for the 
most Part ; neither soaring too high nor drooping too 
low, consequently should merit the greater Esteem 
and Encouragement. 

'' The common Planters leading easy Lives don't 
much admire Labour, or any manly Exercise, except 
Horse-Racing, nor Diversion, except Cock-Fighting, 
in which some greatly delight. This easy Way of 
Living, and the Heat of the Summer makes some very 
lazy, who are then said to be Climate-struck." ^ 

Again, the following extract illustrates quaintly 
the ultra loyalty and churchmanship of the Old Vir- 
ginia parson, burning with enthusiasm for King 
and Church and drinking confusion to all Papists 
and dissenters : 

^ The State of Virginia, Hugh Jones, p. 48. 



22 George Washing-ton 

" And as in Words and Actions they (ministers) 
should be neither too reserved nor too extravagant ; 
so in Principles should they be neither too high nor 
too low : The Virginians being neither Favourers of 
Popery nor the Pretender on the one Side, nor of 
Presbytery nor Anarchy on the other ; but are firm 
Adherents to the Present Constitution in State, the 
Hanover Succession and the Episcopal Church of 
England as by Law established ; consequently then 
if these are the Inclinations of the people, their Minis- 
ters ought to be of the same Sentiments, equally 
averse to papistical and schismatical Doctrines, and 
equally free from Jacobitish and Oliverian Tenets. 
These I confess are my principles, and such as the 
Virginians best relish, and what every good Clergy- 
man and true Englishman (I hope) will favour; for 
such will never refuse to say with me : 

God bless the CJiurch, and George its Defender, 
Convert the Fanaticks, and baulk the Pretender. 

" For our Sovereign is undoubtedly the Defender 
and Head of our national Church of England, in which 
Respect we may pray for the King and Church; but 
Christ is the Head of the Universal or Catholick 
Church, in which Respect we wish Prosperity to the 
Church and King." ^ 

These " climate-struck " Virginians w^ere fast de- 
veloping into a manly and valiant race, who built 
for themselves log palaces on the margin of the 
illimitable waste, erected forts and palisades that 
soon transformed themselves in the oceanlike ver- 
dure around, into Miranda's Enchanted Isle deep in 
^ The State of Virginia, Hugh Jones, p. 96. 



Greenway Court 23 

the summer woodlands, and lacking only the '' glis- 
tening spangles," that Captain John Smith saw in 
their sylvan streams, to bud forth into true Golcon- 
das and Islands of the Blest, albeit anchored fast 
not in the waters of the New Atlantis, but to the 
sturdy trunks of the ancient aboriginal forests. 

On one of these Summer Isles of plantation life, 
deep in the primeval woods, far out on the outposts 
of that lovely valley, where the sparkling Shenan- 
doah danced between beautiful mountains on its 
crystal pilgrimage to the Potomac, had settled 
Thomas, Lord Fairfax, scion of the illustrious race 
that had served under Cromwell, the accomplished 
contributor to Addison's Spectator, on lands, mil- 
lions of acres of which he had taken up by patent 
or purchase at the time of which we speak. 

The emotions of the merchant adventurers, as 
they sighted these lands of the Hesperides and the 
charms of the environing scenery, are vividly por- 
trayed for us by an accomplished antiquary and 
annalist of these virgin times : 

" It requires no extraordinary imagination to ap- 
preciate the emotions which stirred the breasts of the 
voyagers as they entered the Chesapeake, and sailed 
up the wide stretches of the Powhatan in the spring 
of 1607. Those were hours that offered the amplest 
compensation for all the hardships which they had 
endured. They had just finished a tedious and dan- 
gerous passage on the bosom of unknown seas. In 
the bleakest period of winter, under leaden skies and 
with sombre landscapes, the country which they had 



24 George Washing-ton 

reacheci would have been delightful to them; but, 
clothed in the verdure of the Virginian May, when 
the greenness of the foliage and the tints of the wild 
flowers have their deepest and softest coloring, it was 
quite natural that visions of an earthly Paradise should 
have arisen before their eyes, accustomed for so long 
a time to the heaving plains of the Atlantic. The 
lofty trees on the banks, representing many familiar 
and many new varieties, the noble breadth of the river, 
the balmy air laden with the odors of expanding leaf 
and blossom, the clearness of the atmosphere which 
produced such striking vividness of coloring, the 
bright sunshine, the strange birds, adorned with so 
many brilliant hues, flying hither and thither over the 
surface of the stream, or moving about in the 
branches of the trees that grew near its brink, the 
schools of fish that were constantly breaking the sur- 
face of the river into patches of flashing silver, the 
painted savages staring at the little fleet as it passed 
slowly along, all united to create a novel scene touch- 
ing the sensibilities of the dullest and most prosaic of 
the adventurers. Nor was it the less inspiring when 
they recalled that they were the first persons of their 
race to look upon that beautiful expanse of river and 
forest, which, for a length of time almost incalculable, 
had existed just as they saw it then. 

" The charming impressions as to the physical as- 
pect of the country were confirmed by subsequent ob- 
servations. Sir Thomas Dale, writing in 1613, only 
a few years after the first colony was established on 
Jamestown Island, declared that his admiration of 
Virginia increased as his opportunities for informing 
himself about its resources enlarged, and that he be- 



Greenway Court 25 

lieved that it would be equivalent to all the best parts 
of Europe taken together, if it were only brought 
under cultivation and divided among industrious 
people. Percy was equally emphatic in asserting that 
if the promoters of the Virginian enterprise would 
only extend the adventurers a hearty support, the new 
country would be as profitable to England, in time, 
as the Indies had long been to the King of Spain. 
Whitaker describes it as a place beautified by God 
with all the ornaments of nature, and enriched with 
his earthly treasures. ' Heaven and Earth,' exclaimed 
Captain Smith, ' never agreed better to frame a place 
for man's habitation.' Williams apostrophized it as 
Virginia the fortunate, the incomparable, the garden 
of the world ! which, although covered with a natural 
grove, yet was of an aspect so delightful and attract- 
ive, that the most melancholy eye could not look upon 
it * without contentment, nor be contented without ad- 
miration.' ' For exactness of temperature, goodness 
of soil, variety of staples, and capability of receiving 
whatever else is produced in any part of the world, 
Virginia,' he remarks, * gives the right hand of pre-em- 
inence to no province under heaven.' * Where nature 
is so amiable in its naked kind,' asks the author of 
Nova Britannia, ' what may we not expect from it in 
Virginia when it is assisted by human industry, and 
when both art and nature shall join to give the best 
content to men and all other creatures ? ' 'I have 
travailed,' said a leading member of the London Com- 
pany, ' by land over eighteen several kingdoms and 
yet all of them, in my minde, come farr short to Vir- 
ginia.' 

'' Such in part was the testimony as to the general 



26 George Washing-ton 



beauty and fertility of Virginia in its original con- 
dition." 1 

Greenway Court, the home of the Fairfaxes 
(twelve miles S. W. of Winchester), was the spot 
in this picturesque Virginia whither the youthful 
Washington, at sixteen, now wended his way, eager 
to begin the work of surveying, for which he had 
specially prepared himself under Master Williams 
and the Rev. James Marye. Uncertain as the times 
are, we yet catch direct and searching glimpses of 
young Washington, as he flits to and fro in the fluc- 
tuating anecdote biographies of a later time eager to 
glean every ray of light radiating from this obscure 
period, and to concentrate it upon the figure of the 
growing man. From wills and letters and genealo- 
gies, from clerks' records and dusty church-wardens' 
books, from bundles of yellow MSS. tied up and 
stored away in antique secretaries, from private 
stores and public record-offices, pours this light and 
floods many a dark corner of Virginia history. 
Mrs. Pryor has vividly illuminated the twilight 
period of Washington's life as follows : 

'' Augustine Washington selected a fine site on the 
banks of the Rappahannock, opposite Fredericksburg, 
and near * Sting Ray Island,' where the very fishes 
of the stream had resented the coming of Captain 
John Smith. The name of this home was Pine Grove. 
The situation was commanding, and the garden and 
orchard in better cultivation than those they had left. 

* Bruce, Econonvc History of Virginia in the Seventeenth 
Century, vol. i, pp. 73-75. 



Greenway Court 27 

The house was like that at Wakefield, broad and low, 
with the same number of rooms upon the ground floor, 
one of them in the shed-like extension at the back ; 
and the spacious attic was over the main building. It 
had its name from a noble body of trees near it, but 
was also known by the old neighbors as * Ferry Farm.' 
There was no bridge over the Rappahannock, and 
communication was had with the town by the neigh- 
bouring ferry. ' Those who wished to associate Wash- 
ington,' says another writer, ' with the grandeurs of 
stately living in his youth, would find all their theories 
dispelled by a glimpse of the modest dwelling where 
he spent his boyhood years. But nature was bountiful 
in its beauties in the lovely landscape that stretched 
before it. In Overwharton parish, where it was sit- 
uated, the family had many excellent neighbors, and 
there came forth from this little home a race of men 
whose fame could gather no splendor, had the roofs 
which sheltered their childhood been fretted with gold 
and blazoned with diamonds. The heroic principle in 
our people does not depend for perpetuity on family 
trees and ancestral dignities, still less on baronial man- 
sions.' 

" Augustine Washington died in 1743, at the age of 
forty-nine, at Pine Grove, leaving two sons of his 
first wife, and four sons and one daughter our Mary 
had borne to him, little Mildred having died in in- 
fancy. We know then the history of those thirteen 
years, the birth of six children, the death of one, fin- 
ally the widowhood and desolation of the mother. 

" At the time of his father's death, George Wash- 
ington was only eleven years of age. He had been 
heard to say that he knew little of his father except 



28 Georg-e Washington 

the remembrance of his person and of his parental 
fondness. To his mother's forming care he himself 
ascribed the origin of his fortune and his fame. 

*' Mary Washington was not yet thirty-six, the age 
at which American women are supposed to attain their 
highest physical perfection. Her husband had left a 
large estate under her management, to be surrendered 
in portions as each child reached majority. Their 
land lay in different parts of the country, — Fairfax, 
Stafford, King George, and Westmoreland. She 
found herself a member of a large and influencial 
society, which had grown rapidly in wealth, import- 
ance, and elegance of living since her girlhood and 
early married life in Westmoreland. Her stepson, 
Lawrence, married a few months after his father's 
death, and she was thus allied to the Fairfaxes of Bel- 
voir — allied the more closely because of the devo- 
tion of Lawrence to her own son George. Lawrence, 
with his pretty Anne Fairfax, had gone to live on his 
inherited estate of ' Hunting Creek,' which he made 
haste to rechristen in honor of an English admiral, 
famous for having recently reduced the town and for- 
tification at Porto Bello ; famous for having reduced 
the English sailors' rum by mixing it with water. He 
was wont to pace his decks wrapped in a grogram 
cloak. The irate sailors called him and the liquor he 
had spoiled, ' Old Grog.' The irreverent, fun-loving 
Virginians at once caught up the word, and hence- 
forth all unsweetened drinks of brandy or rum and 
water were ' grog,' and all unstable partakers thereof, 
' groggy.' " ' 

^ Mrs. Pryor, The Mother of Washington and Her Times, 
p. 90. 



Greenway Court 29 

The fertility of the New World soil was at least 
paralleled by that of the immigrant families, the 
abundance of the land being often more than 
matched by the superabundance of the children. 
The numerous and prolific marriages had rapidly 
peopled the Old Dominion with a steady growing 
stock of sturdy planters and settlers, for whom pro- 
vision had to be made by anxious fathers and moth- 
ers, whether among the lands already possessed by 
patent, purchase, or marriage, or in the new coun- 
tries and directions everywhere opening westward 
and southward toward the central rivers and valleys 
of the American Continent. 

There were six sons of Augustine Washington 
(two by the first and four by the second marriage) 
to be provided for, thought of, settled in life, liber- 
ally allowanced, as became Virginia gentlemen. 
Lawrence (the eldest) was a graceful and polished 
cavalier who had entered the British Navy, married 
a Fairfax of Belvoir, begun the erection of the 
stately chateau of Mount Vernon in 1743-45, and 
had been amply remembered by his father. There 
were still John and George, Charles, Samuel, and 
Augustine (called August) to be considered. 

The fascination which the sea had exercised over 
Lawrence Washington, and the possession of influ- 
ential friends in that quarter, probably impelled him 
to select the navy as a promising possibility for 
George to whom he was specially devoted. 

Accordingly, when George was fourteen, a mid- 
shipman's warrant was obtained for him, every prep- 



30 George Washing-ton 

aration was made for his departure, the very ship 
on which he was to take up his new hfe lay at anchor 
in the Potomac, when the anguish and timidity of 
Madam Washington, and an emphatic letter of dis- 
approval from her brother Joseph Ball, who was 
living at Stratford-by-Bowe, near London, broke up 
the arrangement and George's career as a future 
Nelson or De Ruyter was for ever closed. 

Mr. Joseph Ball's letter, as Bishop Meade quotes 
it in Old Families of Virginia, is as follows. ^ 

*' Stratford-by-Bow, 19th of May, 1747. 

" I understand that you are advised and have some 
thoughts of putting your son George to sea. I think 
he had better be put apprentice to a tinker, for a com- 
mon sailor before the mast has by no means the com- 
mon liberty of the subject; for they will press him 
from a ship where he has fifty shillings a month and 
make him take twenty-three, and cut and slash and 
use him like a negro, or rather like a dog. And, as 
to any considerable preferment in the navy, it is not 
to be expected, as there are always so many gaping 
for it here who have interest, and he has none. And 
if he should get to be master of a Virginia ship (which 
it is very difficult to do), a planter that has three or 
four hundred acres of land and three or four slaves, 
if he be industrious, may live more comfortably, and 
leave his family in better bread, than such a master 
of a ship can. . . . He must not be too hasty to 
be rich, but go on gently and with patience, as things 
will naturally go. This method, without aiming at 

^ Old Churches, etc., vol. ii, p. 128. 



Greenway Court 31 

being a fine gentleman before his time, will carry a 

man more comfortably and surely through the world 

than going to sea, unless it be a great chance indeed. 

" I pray God keep you and yours. 

" Your loving brother, 

'' Joseph Ball." 

It would form an interesting subject of specula- 
tion to conjecture what would have been Washing- 
ton's future in that wonderful playground of am- 
bition, intellect, personal gallantry, and world-wide 
opportunity — the British Navy; to what heights his 
noble, disinterested soul might have risen, what 
effect such a career would have had in determining 
his patriotism, and the yet unknown future of 
American independence. Even before he was out 
of his teens, Washington was already exhibiting 
qualities so remarkable, at the very threshold of his 
life, that there is small doubt of his winning su- 
preme distinction in any position where high sense 
of duty, firm practical intelligence, passionate loy- 
alty to principle, and untiring devotion to the good 
of his beloved Virginia were involved. 

The intimacy with the Fairfaxes of Belvoir had 
doubtless early brought the boy under the notice of 
Thomas, Lord Fairfax, whose lordly domain, almost 
unexplored, a virgin terra incognita, stretched away 
westward over the Blue Ridge, in unsurveyed opu- 
lence. Surveying was then one of the lucrative 
professions for a young man of practical ability. An 
enormous acreage of public and private land lay 
practically unknown, outside the reach of the asses- 



32 George Washing-ton 

sor. There was doubtless, too, a charm in the track- 
less wilderness which exercised its magic over many 
a young Virginian's imagination, and sent him into 
the woods on missions of which surveying was only 
one, — possibly only an excuse. 

With Washington, however, it was never an ex- 
cuse but a sober, serious profession which he pur- 
sued to the end of his days, with which fact, any 
student of his journals and note-books, from 1748 
to 1799, may easily familiarise himself. 

His exact, detail-loving, mathematical mind took 
delight in the clank of the surveyor's chain, which 
suggested to him not the groan of the slave so much 
as the boundless freedom of the limitless, forest- 
crowned horizon. 

In 1748, a month before he had actually reached 
his sixteenth year. Madam Washington's eldest son 
(who had received his name from George Eskridge, 
her trusted friend, says Mrs. Pryor) was in the 
employ of Lord Fairfax as salaried surveyor, at 
seven pistoles a day. And out of the almost mythic 
recesses of this period, comes a delicate murmur 
and reverberation, reminding us that this extraordi- 
nary boy was human, quelling our mythopoetic ten- 
dencies, and humanising him in a half ludicrous, half 
pathetic way : the " Idyll of the Summer Isles " was 
writing its prologue. Was it the '' romping girl " 
of Fredericksburg, or some one of those five early 
sweethearts who evoked the genius of doggerel in 
the Father of his Country, and made his tongue spell 
out the difficult acrostic? At all events, there is 




THE FIRST CABINET. 
From an old print. 



Greenway Court 33 

something delightfully human in the way he ad- 
dresses this unknown '' Frances," as there was, in 
after years, in the affectionate '' Patsy " by which 
he addressed the dark-eyed widow of Daniel Parke 
Custis. 



CHAPTER III 
A boy's journal 

^^TT should be mentioned, however," says Mr. M. 

1 D. Conway, " that young Washington's head 
was not in the least turned by intimacy with the aris- 
tocracy. He wrote letters to his former playmates in 
which no snobbish line is discoverable. He writes to 
his * Dear friend Robin ' : ' My place of residence is at 
present at his lordship's where I might, was my heart 
disengaged, pass my time very pleasantly, as there's a 
very agreeable young lady lives in the same house 
(Colonel George Fairfax's wife's sister). But as that's 
only adding fuel to fire it makes me the more uneasy, 
for by often and unavoidably being in company with 
her revives my former passion for your Lowland beau- 
ty ; whereas, was I to live more retired from young 
women, I might elevate in some measure my sorrows 
by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in the 
grave of oblivion or etearnall forgetfulness, for, as I 
am very well assured, that's the only antidote or rem- 
edy that I ever shall be relieved by or only recess that 
can administer any cure or help to me, as I am well 
convinced, was I ever to attempt anything, I should 
only get a denial which would be only adding grief 
to uneasiness.' 

" The young lady at Greenway Court was Mary 
Cary, and the Lowland beauty was Betsy Fauntleroy, 
v.hose hand Washington twice sought, but who be- 

34 



A Boy's Journal 35 

came the wife of the Hon. Thomas Adams. While 
travelhng on his surveys, often among the Red Men, 
the youth sometimes gives vent to his feehngs in verse. 

* Oh Ye Gods, why should my Poor resistless Heart 

Stand to oppose thy might and Power 
At last surrender to Cupid's feather'd Dart 

And now lays bleeding every Hour 
For her that's Pityless of my grief and Woes, 

And will not on me Pity take. 
I'll sleep among my most inveterate Foes 

And with gladness never wish to wake. 
In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close 

That in an enraptured dream I may 
In a rapt lulling sleep and gentle repose 

Possess those joys denied by Day.' 

"' And it must also be recorded that if he had learned 
how to conduct himself in the presence of persons su- 
perior to himself in position, age, and culture, — and 
it will be remembered that Lord Fairfax was an able 
contributor to the Spectator (which Washington was 
careful to study while at Green way), — this youth no 
less followed the instruction of his io8th rule : ' Hon- 
our your natural parents though they be poor.' His 
widowed mother was poor, and she was ignorant, but 
he was devoted to her ; being reverential and gracious 
to her even when, with advancing age, she became 
somewhat morose and exacting, while he was loaded 
with public cares. 

" I am no worshipper of Washington. But in the 
hand of that man of strong brain and powerful pas- 
sions once lay the destiny of the New World, — in a 
sense, human destiny. But for his possession of the 
humility and self-discipline underlying his Rules of 
Civility, the ambitious politicians of the United States 



36 Georg-e Washington 

might, to-day, be popularly held to a much lower 
standard. The tone of his character was so entirely 
that of modesty, he was so fundamentally patriotic, 
that even his faults are transformed to virtues, and 
the very failures of his declining years are popularly 
accounted successes. He alone was conscious of his 
mental decline, and gave this as a reason for not ac- 
cepting a third nomination for the Presidency. This 
humility has established an unwritten law of limita- 
tion on vaulting presidential ambitions. Indeed, in- 
trigue and corruption in America must ever struggle 
with the idealised phantom of this grand personality." ^ 
" His lordship " was no other than Thomas, Lord 
Fairfax, " who," says a well-known historian, " himself 
came to Virginia in 1746 — a man strayed out of the 
world of fashion at fifty-five into the forests of a wild 
frontier. The better part of his ancestral estates in 
Yorkshire had been sold to satisfy the creditors of his 
spendthrift father. These untilled stretches of land 
in the Old Dominion were now become the chief part 
of his patrimony. 'T was said, too, that he had suf- 
fered a cruel misadventure in love at the hands of a 
fair jilt in London, and so had become the austere, ec- 
centric bachelor he showed himself to be in the free 
and quiet colony. A man of taste and culture, he had 
written with Addison and Steele for the Spectator; a 
man of the world, he had acquired, for all his reserve, 
that easy touch and intimate mastery in dealing with 
men, which come with the long practice of such men 
of fashion as are also men of sense. He brought with 
him to Virginia, though past fifty, the fresh vigor of 
a young man eager for the free pioneer life of such a 

^ M. D. Conway, Rules of Civility, p. 43. 



A Boy's Journal 37 

province. He tarried but two years with his cousin, 
where the colony had settled to an ordered way of 
living. Then he built himself a roomy lodge, shad- 
owed by spreading piazzas, and fitted with such simple 
appointments as sufficed for comfort, in the depths of 
the forest, close upon seventy miles away, within the 
valley of the Shenandoah, where a hardy frontier 
people had but begun to gather. The great manor- 
house he had meant to build was never begun. The 
plain comforts of ' Greenway Court ' satisfied him 
more and more easily as the years passed, and the 
habits of a simple life grew increasingly pleasant and 
familiar^ till thirty years and more had slipped away 
and he was dead, at ninety-one, broken-hearted, men 
said, because the King's government had fallen upon 
final defeat and was done with in America. 

'' It was in the company of these men, and of those 
who naturally gathered about them in that hospitable 
country, that George Washington was bred. * A 
stranger had no more to do,' says Beverley, ' but to en- 
quire upon the road where any gentleman or good 
housekeeper lived, and there he might depend upon 
being received with hospitality,' and 't was certain 
many besides strangers would seek out the young 
major at Mount Vernon, whom his neighbors had 
hastened to make their representative in the House of 
Burgesses, and the old soldier of the soldierly house 
of Fairfax, who was President of the King's Council, 
and so next to the Governor himself. A boy who was 
much at Mount Vernon and at Mr. Fairfax's seat, 
Belvoir, might expect to see not a little that was worth 
seeing of the life of the colony." ^ 

* Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, pp. 49-51. 



38 Georg-e Washington 

Thus it was that this great heart, in the immediate 
presence of a scion of the Old World, began to feel 
those human dreams and pangs to which every one 
has been subject since the world began. 

At sixteen, the precocious, self-educated boy wrote 
the following Journal, which, full as it is of boyish 
inaccuracies, is interesting not only as the first piece 
of authentic connected composition from his hand, 
but still more so, psychologically, as revealing his 
early grasp of detail when almost a child. Already 
one sees in it that developing force which led Gov- 
ernor Dinwiddie, six years later, to send him as a 
kind of Ambassador to the French, in the Ohio 
Valley, and publish, at the expense of the State, his 
graphically written Journal of the expedition. 

'* Journal of a Boy Surveyor 

"Friday, March nth, 1747-8. Began my Jour- 
ney in company with George Fairfax, Esqr. ; we trav- 
ell'd this day 40 miles to Mr. George Neavels in Prince 
William County. 

" Saturday, March 12th. This Morning Mr. James 
Genn, ye surveyor, came to us ; we travell'd over ye 
Blue Ridge to Capt. Ashbys on Shannandoah River. 
Nothing remarkable happen'd. 

" Sunday, March 13th. Rode to his Lordship's 
Quarter about 4 miles higher up ye river. We went 
through most beautiful Groves of Sugar Trees, and 
spent ye last part of ye Day in admiring ye Trees and 
richness of ye Land. 

" Monday 14th. We sent our baggage to Capt. 
Hites (near Frederick Town), went ourselves down 



A Boy's Journal 39 

ye River about i6 miles to Capt. Isaac Pennington's 
(the Land exceeding rich and fertile all ye way — pro- 
duces abundance of Grain, Hemp, Tobacco, &c.) in 
order to lay of[f] some Land on Gates Marsh and 
Long Marsh. 

" Tuesday 15th. We set out early with intent to 
run round ye sd. Land, but being taken in a rain, and 
it increasing very fast obliged us to return. It clear- 
ing about one o'clock and our time being too Precious 
to loose, we a second time ventured out and worked 
hard till night, then returned to Penningtons. We got 
our suppers and [I] was Lighted into a Room and I 
not being so good a woodsman as ye rest of my com- 
pany, striped myself very orderly and went into ye Bed, 
as they calld it, when to my surprise, I found it to be 
nothing but a little straw matted together without 
sheets or any thing else, but only one thread bear 
blanket with double its weight of vermin, such as Lice, 
Fleas, &c. I was glad to get up (as soon as ye Light 
was carried from us). I put on my cloths and lay 
as my companions. Had we not been very tired, I am 
sure we should not have slep'd much that night. I 
made a Promise not to sleep so from that time for- 
ward, chusing rather to sleep in ye open air before a 
fire, as will appear hereafter. 

" Wednesday i6th. We set out early and finish'd 
about one o'clock and then Travelled up to Frederick 
Town, where our Baggage came to us. We cleaned 
ourselves (to get Rid of ye Game we had catched ye 
night before). I took a Review of ye Town and then 
return'd to our Lodgings where we had a good Din- 
ner prepared for us. Wine and Rum Punch in plenty, 



40 Georg-e Washington 

and a good Feather Bed with clean sheets, which was 
a very agreeable regale. 

" Thursday 17th. Rain'd till ten o'clock and then 
clearing we reached as far as Major Campbells, one 
of their Burgesses about 25 miles from Town. Noth- 
ing remarkable this day nor night, but that we had 
a Tolerable good Bed [to] lay on. 

" Friday i8th. We Travell'd up about 35 miles to 
Thomas Barnwickes, on Potowmack, where we found 
ye River so excessively high by reason of ye great 
Rains that had fallen up about ye Allegany Mountains, 
as they told us, which was then bringing down ye 
melted snow and that it would not be fordable for 
several Days. It was then about six foot higher than 
usual and was rising. We agreed to stay till Monday. 
We this day calld to see ye Fam'd Warm Springs. 
We camped out in ye field this night. Nothing re- 
markable happened till Sunday ye 20th. 

" Sunday 20th. Finding ye river not much abated 
we in the evening swam our horses over and carried 
them to Charles Polks in Maryland, for pasturage till 
ye next Morning. 

'' Monday 21st. We went over in a Canoe and 
Travelled up Maryland side all ye Day in a contin- 
ued Rain to Col. Cresaps, right against ye mouth of 
ye South Branch, about 40 miles from Polks, I believe 
ye worst road than ever was trod by Man or Beast. 

" Tuesday 22d. Continued Rain and ye Freshes 
kept us at Cresaps. 

" Wednesday, 23d. Raind till about two o'clock and 
cleard, when we were agreeably surprised at ye sight 
of thirty odd Indians coming from war with only one 
scalp. We had some Liquor with Us of which we 



A Boy's Journal 41 

gave them Part, it elevating there spirits, put them in 
ye humor of Dauncing, of whom we had a War 
Daunce. There manner of Dauncing is as follows, 
viz. : They clear a Large Circle and make a great Fire 
in ye middle. Men seat themselves around it. Ye 
speaker makes a grand speech, telling them in what 
manner they are to daunce. After he has finishd ye 
best Dauncer jumps up as one awaked out of a sleep, 
and Runs and Jumps about ye Ring in a most comicle 
manner. He is followed by ye Rest. Then begins 
there musicians to Play. Ye musick is a Pot half full 
of water, with a Deerskin streched over it as tight as 
it can, and a goard with some shott in it to rattle and 
a Piece of an horse's tail tied to it to make it look fine. 
Ye one keeps rattling and ye others drumming all ye 
while ye others is Dauncing. 

" Fryday, 25th, 1748. Nothing remarkable on 
thursday, but only being with ye Indians all day. So 
shall slip it. This day left Cresaps and went up to ye 
mouth of Paterson's Creek, and there swum our 
horses over, got over ourselves in a canoe and trav- 
elled up ye following part of ye Day to Abram 
Johnstones, 15 miles from ye mouth, where we camped. 

" Saterday, 26. Travelled up ye creek to Solomon 
Hedges, Esq., one of his Majesty's Justices of ye 
Peace for ye County of Frederick, where we camped. 
When we came to supper there was neither a Cloth 
upon ye Table nor a knife to eat with ; but as good 
luck would have it, we had knives of our own. 

'* Sunday, 27th. Travell'd over to ye South Branch, 
attended with ye Esqr. to Henry Van Metriss, in order 
to go about Intended work of Lots. 

" Monday, 28th. Travell'd up ye Branch about 30 



42 Georg-e Washing-ton 

miles to Mr. James Rutlidges Horse Jockey, and about 
70 miles from ye mouth. 

'* Tuesday, 29th. This Morning went out and sur- 
veyd five hundred acres of Land, and went down to 
one Michael Stumpe on ye So. Fork of ye Branch. 
On our way shot two wild Turkies. 

" Wednesday, 30th. This Morning began our In- 
tended business of Laying of[f] Lots. We began at 
ye Boundary Line of ye Northern 10 miles above 
Stumps, and run of[f] two Lots, and return'd to 
Stumps. 

''Thursday, 31st. Early this Morning one of our 
men went out with ye gun, and soon returned with 
two wild Turkies. We then went to our business run 
of[f] three lots, and returned to our camping place at 
Stumps. 

" Thursday Fry day, April ye ist, 1748. This Morn- 
ing shot twice at wild Turkies but killd none. Run 
of[f] three Lots and returnd to camp. 

" Saterday, April 2d. Last night was a blowing 
rainy night. Our straw catch'd a Fire, yt. we were 
laying upon. I was luckily preservd by one of our 
Men's awaking when it was in a [^]. We run of[f] 
four lots this day which reached below Stumps. 

'' Sunday, 3d. Last Night was a much more bluster- 
ing night than ye former. We had our tent carried 
quite of[f] with ye wind, and was obliged to Lie ye 
latter part of ye night without covering. There came 
several Persons to see us this day. One of our men 
shot a wild Turkic. 

'' Monday, 4th. This Morning Mr. Fairfax left us 
with intent to go down by ye mouth of ye Branch. 

^ Word erased. 



A Boy's Journal 43 

We did two Lots and was attended by a great Com- 
pany of People, men Women, and children, that at- 
tended us through ye woods as we went, shewing there 
antick tricks. I really think they seem to be as igno- 
rant a set of people as the Indians. They would never 
speak English but when spoken to, they speak all 
Dutch. This day our tent was blown down by ye vio- 
lentness of ye wind. 

" Tuesday, 5th. We went out and did 4 Lots. We 
were attended by ye same Company of People, yt. we 
had ye day before. 

" Wednesday, 6th. Last night was so Intolerably 
smoky that we were obliged all hands to leave ye 
Tent to ye Mercy of ye wind and Fire. This day 
was attended by our afored, Company, up till about 
12 o'clock. When we finished, we Travell'd down ye 
Branch to Henry Van Metriss. On our journey was 
catchd in a very heavy rain. We got under a straw 
House until ye worst of it was over, and then con- 
tinued our Journey. 

" Thursday, 7th. Raind successively all last night. 
This morning one of our men killd a wild Turkie that 
weight 20 Pounds. We went and surveyd 15 Hun- 
dred acres of Land and returnd to Van Metriss about 
I o'clock. About two I heard that Mr. Fairfax was 
come up and at i Peter Cassey's about 2 miles of[f] 
in ye same old field. I then took my horse and went 
up to see him. We eat our Dinners and walked down 
to Van Metris's. We stayed about two hours and 
walked back again, and slept in Cassey's House which 
was ye first night I had slept in a House since I came 
up to ye Branch. 

'' Fryday, 8th. We breakfasted at Cassey's and rode 



44 George Washington 

down to Van Metris's to get all our Company together, 
which when we had accomplished, we rode down 
below ye Trough in order to lay of[f] Lots there. 
We laid of[f] one this day. The Trough is couple 
of Ledges of Mountains, impassable, running side and 
side together for above 7 or 8 miles and ye River down 
between them. You must ride round ye back of ye 
Mountain for to get below them. We camped this 
Night in ye woods near a wild Meadow, where was a 
large stack of Hay. After we had pitched our Tent 
and made a very large Fire, we pulled out our Knap- 
sack, in order to Recruit ourselves. Every one was 
his own cook. Our Spits was forked Sticks, our Plates 
was a large Chip; as for Dishes, we had none. 

" Saterday, 9th. Set ye Surveyors to work, whilst 
Mr. Fairfax and myself stayed at ye Tent. Our Pro- 
vision being all exhausted and ye Person that was to 
bring us a Recruit disappointing us, we were obliged 
to go without untill we could get some from ye neigh- 
bors, which was not untill 4 or 5 o'clock in ye Evening. 
We then took leaves of ye Rest of our Company, road 
down to John Colins in order to set of[f] ye next 
Day homewards. 

'' Sunday, loth. We took our farewell of ye Branch 
and travelld over Hills and Mountains to Coddys, on 
Great Cacapehon, about 40 miles. 

"Monday, nth. We travelld from Coddys down 
to Frederick Town, where we reached about 12 o'clock. 
We dined in Town and then went to Capt. Hites and 
lodged. 

"Tuesday, 12th. — We set of[f] from Capt. Hites 
in order to go over Wms. Gap's about 20 miles, and 
after riding about 20 miles we had 20 to go, for we 



A Boy's Journal 45 

had lost ourselves and got up as high as Ashby's Bent. 
We did get over Wms. Gap that night, and as low as 
Wm. West in Fairfax County, i8 miles from ye Top 
of ye Ridge. This day see a Rattled snake, ye first 
we had seen in all our journey. 

" Wednesday, ye 13th of April, 1748. Mr. Fairfax 
got safe home and I myself safe to my Brothers, which 
concludes my Journal." ^ 

^ W. C Ford, The Writings of George Washington, vol. i. 



CHAPTER IV 
Washington's university 

THE world has always seemed curious to know 
how its great men received their learning and 
training, how and where they were educated, who 
were their teachers and trainers, and what moulding 
influences gathered about their childhood and youth 
and fashioned them for their fate to be. Perhaps 
the most interesting of all the works of Xenophon is 
the limpid narrative in which he describes the birth, 
training, and schooling of the great Cyrus ; even the 
fictitious " Frenchy " biography of Telemaqiie pos- 
sesses a charm, quite apart from its grace of style, 
in the attractive way in which it represents, under 
antique forms and transparent pseudonyms, the up- 
bringing of a luxurious prince surrounded by the 
dissipations of a gorgeous court. Literary syba- 
rites linger with delight over the educational pages 
of Montaigne, of Massillon, and of Wilhclm Mei- 
ster, and in every biography and autobiography that 
appears, perhaps those pages are most keenly rel- 
ished which deal with the school life and home in- 
fluences of the world's noted men and women. The 
mother's knee antedates the school desk or the 
church-pulpit. The fascinating skill of Xenophon 
draws aside the curtain, and lets our eye rest upon 

46 



Washington s University 47 

a mighty Oriental potentate as he is taught the 
elemental truths of life, to ride, to swim, to hurl the 
javelin, and to tell the truth, the simplest duties of 
everyday existence, the power of self-government 
and of self-control, the duties to ourselves and 
others : one gazes at the picture and finds the Persian 
system in many ways admirable. Then we turn to 
Plutarch and find in his marvellous biographies the 
Spartan and Roman, the Athenian and Oriental 
chapters of educational experience graphically con- 
trasted, and full of instruction for the modern 
reader interested in the pedagogical problems of the 
ancients. The subtle moralisings of Goethe and 
Montaigne afford deep glimpses into the education 
of their authors, and invest each with a kind of halo 
which sharply distinguishes the French and German 
systems from each other. 

Washington was the finest product of the planter 
commonwealth; his Oxford and Cambridge were 
the floods and fields, the ups and downs of the Old 
Virginia life, the experiences of the rough, prac- 
tical surroundings in which he found his boyhood 
entangled, the beguiling ways and free-and-easy 
hospitalities of that stately old freeman's common- 
wealth, which had founded itself along the Chesa- 
peake and the James in the golden days of Stuart 
and Guelph. The coming of the cavaliers had filled 
this New Atlantis, risen out of the Western seas, 
with a free and noble population, largely made up 
of gentle folk whose gentility had become impatient 
at home, and sought new avenues of relief abroad. 



48 Georg-e Washing-ton 

A year before Jacques Cartier, creeping out of St. 
Malo in his tiny craft of thirty tons' burthen, had 
crossed the seas and sailed up the St. Lawrence to the 
sites of Quebec and Montreal, Virginia had pre- 
sented itself to the English navigators of James- 
town as a mighty stairway, up whose five-fold stair 
of Tidewater, Middle, Piedmont, Shenandoah, and 
Appalachian Virginia, crept an ever-increasing, 
often-defeated, never-discouraged, indefatigable tide 
of human beings as patient and implacable as the 
sea itself, having a choice eye for choice localities, 
full of the healthy human selfishness that takes the 
best it can get — where all is free — with the least 
possible effort, settling the rich river-valleys and 
game-haunted mountain gorges, and making them- 
selves generally comfortable wherever they went, 
despite Pamunkies, Chickahominies, Shawnees, 
Mingos, or Cherokees with which every covert at the 
time abounded. The few hundred immigrants at 
Old Point and Hampton Roads had expanded by 
this time up and down, all things considered, into 
a solid million of alert, keen-eyed, intelligent fron- 
tiersmen, whose " frontier," in five generations, had 
pushed back from the blue Atlantic to the Blue 
Ridge, the Alleghanies, and the Ohio. 

The novelty of this life and of these conditions 
in Virginia in the eighteenth century had not yet 
worn off ; the blue smoke curling: heavenward from 
a thousand wigwams showed still, in Washington's 
youth and early manhood, the power and plenitude 
of that slowly receding Indian barbarism which 



Washington's University 49 

filled the sunset line with thrilling adventure, and 
sharpened men's eyes and ears and muscles to the 
presence of a numerous and dangerous foe. Less 
than a hundred miles from his native Westmoreland, 
in and about which his father's five thousand patri- 
monial acres were situated, Washington received 
much of his training, particularly at Greenway 
Court, on the outskirts of a remote wilder- 
ness which lost itself westward in immeasurable 
distances of territory, untrodden save by the feet 
of deer and bear and Red Man. The daring 
missionary, the lonely Jesuit voyageur, impelled 
by conscience and by zeal for the French king, 
alone had stolen through its measureless soli- 
tudes, and down its mighty rivers, and over 
its ocean-like lakes from Ontario and the St. Law- 
rence to St. Louis, Natchez, and New Orleans, far 
down into tropical Louisiana. The hunter, the trap- 
per, the seekers after gold and pearls, the romantic 
dreamer in search of the Fountain of Youth, tra- 
versed these appalling wastes, built their huts on 
river-bank and mountain height, staked out their 
claims here and there in regions vast as the sea itself, 
and lived and died as pioneers — often as martyrs — 
of the civilisation to come. 

This earnest, active life of intense physical unrest 
and energy was the school in which Washington be- 
came an apt and ready scholar, a student of men 
and of things, a man of affairs, alive in every nerve 
and muscle, cautious, resourceful, strong as a young 
Hercules to endure sickness and privation, crafty 



50 George Washington 

as Odysseus himself in the exercise of a quick intel- 
Hgence, ripe for action, and wise in counsel far 
beyond his years, in many things a veritable sage 
of twenty; having "small Latin and less Greek" 
(like his brother Shakspere), but possessing a pro- 
found, almost a marvellous, knowledge of the world 
around him, rising to nigh supreme command in the 
West almost in his 'teens, and revealing in his Jour- 
nal to the Ohio (published by command of the 
Governor, in 1754), such insight, discretion, and 
powers of command as prophesied for him a brilliant 
future. 

When his '* loving brother " Lawrence fell ill, in 
1752, George gave up the forest seclusion of the 
lovely Shenandoah Valley, with all its happy text- 
books of hill and dale and teeming trout-stream, and 
hurried back to Mount Vernon to accompany Law- 
rence to Barbadoes and the Bahamas, whither deli- 
cate lungs called him. But the radiant Caribbean 
proved only a Calypso's Isle whose gorgeous air had 
no healing in it. Washington himself was attacked 
by small-pox after accepting a *' conscience " invita- 
tion to dinner at a house where the scourge (about 
to be greatly alleviated by Jenner's famous dis- 
covery) was prevalent. 

Soon after this, Lawrence died, leaving his estates 
first to his little daughter and then to his brother 
George, should the daughter die without issue. 

She died almost immediately after her father, and 
thus to George, the youngest executor and special 
favourite of Lawrence, fell the noble acres of Mount 




I 2 

CO o 
< -C 

ii 

CC b 
Ul 

> 

I- 

z 
o 



Washington's University 51 

Vernon (called also Epsewasson or Hunting 
Lodge). 

And now begins that intense and strenuous '' cur- 
riculum " of Washington's education, which started 
with his forest matriculation as surveyor to Lord 
Fairfax in 1747-8, and continued through the storm 
and stress of the French and Indian Wars until his 
marriage in 1759, at the age of twenty-seven, to 
Martha Custis. 

The graphic metaphor of the mediaevalist likened 
such an education to the course of the chariot, as it 
wound its way to the goal over the mazy spaces of 
the Greek stadium or the Roman amphitheatre, 
where racers and athletes fixed their burning eyes 
on contending charioteers, and where the winners 
of the goal — the diploma of " graduation " in this 
gradus ad Parnassum — received universal acclaim 
from the bystanders. 

The bystanders in Washington's case were his 
neighbours, the planters of the stalwart young com- 
monwealth, the House of Burgesses, and the Colony 
of Virginia itself, all of whom, it seems, had eagerly 
watched the remarkable career of Mary Ball's eldest 
son, and felt that within it lay notable developments. 
The long-legged, lank, hollow-chested, awkward 
Wakefield boy had grown into a superb specimen of 
young Virginian manhood, " straight as an Indian 
arrow," wrote his adopted grandson, dignified, com- 
manding-looking, every inch a man and a gentle- 
man, powerful in physique, gracious though slightly 
cold in manner, reticent rather than rushing in 



52 Georg-e Washington 

speech, infinitely cumulative of details, almost a 
martinet in matters of decorum, pedantically 
microscopic in his attention to minutiae, yet with 
an eye as keen as an Indian's for distant possibilities 
and opportunities to benefit King, crown, and 
colony. 

George Washington was at this time a '' King 
George's man," devotedly loyal, supremely subser- 
vient to the wishes of his royal master as reflected 
in the orders of Council and the direction of the 
Governor, a British subject who had never yet 
dreamt of severance from his sovereign, a Virginian 
Englishman, in whose loyal arteries swept a tide of 
English blood as hot for King and Parliament as 
ever coursed in the bodies of Pitt and Fox, Chatham 
and Burke, soon to be his face-to-face '' contem- 
poraries " — in debate at least — on the banks of the 
Thames. 

And it is a singular fact that the implacable foes 
of this " undergraduate " time were not the English 
who lay, as it were, still submerged beneath the 
Eastern horizon, but — the French, in a few short 
years to become his friends, admirers, almost wor- 
shippers. Says John Fiske : 

" Hitherto the struggle with the House of Bourbon 
had been confined to Canada, at one end of the line, 
and Carolina at the other, while the centre had not 
been directly implicated. In the first American Con- 
gress, convened by Jacob Leisler at New York, in 
1690, for the purpose of concerting measures of de- 
fence against the common enemy, Virginia (as we 



Washing-ton's University 53 

have seen) took no part. The seat of war was then 
remote, and her strength, exerted at such a distance, 
would have been of Httle avail. But in the sixty years 
since 1690, the white population of Virginia had in- 
creased fourfold, and her wealth had increased still 
more. Looking down the Monongahela River to the 
point where its union with the Alleghany makes the 
Ohio, she beheld there the gateway to the Great West, 
and felt a yearning to possess it; for the westward 
movement was giving rise to speculations in land, and 
a company was forming for the exploration and settle- 
ment of all that Ohio country. But French eyes were 
not blind to the situation, and it was their king's pawn, 
not the English, that opened the game on the mighty 
chessboard. French troops from Canada crossed Lake 
Erie, and built their first fort where the city of Erie 
now stands. Then they pushed forward down the 
wooded valley of the Alleghany, and built a second 
fortress and a third. Another stride would bring them 
to the gateway. Something must be done at once. 

" At such a crisis. Governor Dinwiddle had need of 
the ablest man Virginia could afford to undertake a 
journey of unwonted difficulty through the wilderness, 
to negotiate with Indian tribes, and to warn the ad- 
vancing Frenchmen to trespass no further upon Eng- 
lish territory. As the best person to entrust with this 
arduous enterprise, the shrewd old Scotchman selected 
a lad of one-and-twenty, Lord Fairfax's surveyor, 
George Washington. History does not record a more 
extraordinary choice, nor one more completely jus- 
tified." ^ 

Virginia needed, indeed, the presence of this ex- 
*Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, vol. ii, p. 378. 



54 George Washing-ton 

traorclinary young man just at the time and place 
at which the shrewd " merchant governor "of the 
Colony, Dinwiddie, a canny and observant Scot, 
summoned him. He was one of those " climate- 
struck " Virginians who, though foreign -born, fell 
under the benign influence of the region and re- 
mained in the country as a " merchant adventurer," 
long after he had ceased to represent his Majesty as 
chief magistrate of the commonwealth. His keen 
Scotch eyes had watched the rise and progress of 
this yoimg Virginia cavalier, whom in a letter to 
Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania, he described 
as " a person of distinction," and had found in him 
such premonitions of strength and efficiency as to 
compel him, in a way, to choose Washington rather 
than another from the crowd of distinguished gentle- 
men, old as well as young, who might have served 
the King at this crisis. One catches glimpses of the 
looming form of the nascent diplomat and general, 
even then, when he had hardly entered upon the 
enjoyment of his Mount Vernon estates, and the de- 
lightful social life of the period, and when the 
charms of home life, the beauty of his plantations, 
the spell of horse and hound and angler's rod and 
the coquetry of winsome women would to most 
youths of one-and-twenty have proved most irre- 
sistible. The education of the forest, of the chain 
and theodolite, of the spacious geometries of heaven 
and earth in which his youth had been passed, the 
self-made, self-taught qualities of his manly and 
self-dependent nature, kindling with the unquenched 



Washing-ton's University 55 

ambition to serve his colony and people, urged him 
to throw aside the enticing appeals of self-indulgent 
ease, and to present himself to the Governor as a 
willing instrument in endeavouring to make the dif- 
ficulties of the colony less insurmountable and less 
intolerable. He was, of all the Virginians of his 
day, the one best fitted for Dinwiddie's delicate and 
dangerous mission, the one best combining a pro- 
found knowledge of Indian craft and cunning with 
surest reliance upon himself, prudence, foresight. 
Stoic powers of endurance, and a boundless pride 
and conscientiousness that would drive him to the 
uttermost, and make him bate no jot or tittle of 
irksome detail to make the embassy a complete suc- 
cess. He set out on his task with an energy that 
bordered on fury, in a kind of Berserker rage, pos- 
sessed with an impelling desire to push into the wil- 
derness, carry through his negotiations, and return 
to quaint old Williamsburg, on the Middle Planta- 
tion, with full information of the machinations of 
the French in the far Ohio Valley. 

For here it was that the whole trouble hinged. 
The French had come flowing down from the 
North in a mighty tide of mission-work and con- 
quest, which threatened to swallow up the English 
frontier, unsettle boundaries, quicken and deepen 
Indian hostility, and make the border-lands, west- 
ward of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the 
Carolinas, unhabitable by men of Anglo-Saxon 
breed, and to kindle the flames of a perpetual feud. 

Washington's intimate knowledge of Indian ways 



56 George Washington 

and wiles, his skill in woodcraft, his known courage 
and dauntless spirit, pointed him out as the one man 
born to plunge into the waste and bring thence to 
his people definite intelligence of the purpose of the 
French, and definite suggestions of what was now 
best to be done to foil them. No Laodicean was he, 
with lukewarm heart and limping intelligence, quak- 
ing in his shoes over imaginary difficulties, or 
quibbling over details of administration or rank; 
but straightforward, direct, absolutely devoid of self- 
ishness or vanity from the very start, a whole-souled 
Virginia gentleman and soldier, intent on duty per- 
fectly performed, and nothing else, neither expecting 
nor caring for any one's commendation except Din- 
widdie's and that of his own conscience. 
Hear his own account of the mission : 

" Advertisement 

" As it was thought advisable by his Honour the 
Governor to have the following Account of my Pro- 
ceedings to and from the FRENCH on OHIO, com- 
mitted to Print I think I can do no less than apologise, 
in some Measure^ for the numberless Imperfections 
of it. 

'' There intervened but one Day between my Arrival 
in Williamsburg, and the Time for the Council's Meet- 
ing, for me to prepare and transcribe, from the rough 
Minutes I had taken in my Travels, this Journal ; the 
writing of which only was sufficient to employ me 
closely the whole Time, consequently admitted of no 
leisure to consult of a new and proper Form of the 
old: Neither was I apprised, nor did in the least con- 



Washing-ton's University 57 

ceive, when I wrote this for his Honour's Perusal, 
that it ever would be published, or even have more 
than a cursory Reading; till I was informed, at the 
Meeting of the present General Assembly, that it was 
already in the Press. 

'' There is nothing can recommend it to the Public, 
but this. Those Things which came under the Notice 
of my own Observation, I have been explicit and just 
in a Recital of: — Those which I have gathered from 
Report, I have been particularly cautious not to aug- 
ment, but collected the Opinions of the several Intel- 
ligencers, and selected from the whole, the most prob- 
able and consistent Account. 

" G. Washington." 



"Wednesday, October 31, 1753. 

" I was commissioned and appointed by the Hon- 
ourable Robert Dinwiddle, Esq., Governor, etc., of 
Virginia, to visit and deliver a letter to the Command- 
ant of the French forces on the Ohio, and set out on 
the intended Journey the same day : The next, I arrived 
at Fredericksburg^ and engaged Mr. Jacob Vanbraam, 
to be my French interpreter ; and proceeded with him 
to Alexandria, where we provided Necessaries. From 
thence we went to Winchester, and got Baggage, 
Horses, etc. ; and from thence we pursued the new 
Road to Wills-Creek, where we arrived the 14th of 
November. 

" Here I engaged Mr. Gist to pilot us out, and also 
hired four others as Servitors, Barnaby Ciirrin and 
John Mac-Quire, Indian Traders, Henry Steward, 
and William Jenkins; and in company with those per- 
sons, left the Inhabitants the Day following. 



58 George Washing-ton 

" The excessive Rains and vast Quantity of Snow 
which had fallen, prevented our reaching Mr. Frazier's 
an Indian Trader, at the Mouth of Turtle Creek, on 
Monongahela [River], till Thursday, the 22d. We 
were informed here, that Expresses had been sent a 
few Days before to the Traders down the River, to 
acquaint them with the French General's death, and 
the Return of the major Part of the French Army into 
Winter Quarters. 

*' The Waters were quite impassable, without swim- 
ming our Horses ; which obliged us to get the Loan of 
a Canoe from Frazier, and to send Barnahy Currin 
and Henry Stezvard down the Monongahela, with our 
Baggage, to meet us at the Forks of Ohio, about lo 
miles, there to cross the Aligany." 

He winds up this remarkable document, which 
fills some twenty-five octavo pages, with the follow- 
ing expressions : 

" I hope what has been said will be sufficient to 
make your Honour satisfied with my Conduct; for 
that was my Aim in undertaking the Journey, and 
chief Study throughout the prosecution of it." ^ 

This Journal, filled as it is with homely yet 
minute and important facts, might well be called 
Washington's " graduation essay," a bit *' of orig- 
inal search and research " in the wilderness, of the 
highest significance to the interest of the common- 
wealth, based on the severest personal investigation. 
This study of aboriginal conditions and of French 
diplomacy lasted two months and a half, and con- 

* Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 39. 



Washing-ton's University 59 

stitutes a striking story of Darkest America in the 
time just before the Revolution, when all the forces 
and energies on the continent were about to gather 
for the supreme struggle between Guelph and Bour- 
bon, between George II and Louis XV, between 
fleur-de-lis and rose, as they seemed to spring spon- 
taneously from the virgin soil of the West, lying be- 
fore them in immemorial calm. 

The successive grades of Washington's prelimi- 
nary education were thus being rapidly surmounted 
in the great University of the Wilderness, whose 
countless unknown creatures yielded up their knowl- 
edge to him, and spoke to, and taught him in tongues 
infinitely more efficient than those of the mere 
scholastic kind. Washington was always, in later 
years, regretting his ignorance of French, of the 
cultured training which his elder brothers Lawrence 
and Augustine had received at Appleby School in 
England, of the thousand and one polite accomplish- 
ments which the Virginians who matriculated in 
the Old World possessed in ample degree; but he 
need not have been ashamed of the real knowledge 
which he really and truly possessed, — not the knowl- 
edge which Master Hobby, the sexton convict, and 
Master Williams, the Wakefield schoolmaster, and 
the ex- Jesuit Marye (turned Huguenot), had im- 
parted : the knowledge possessed by the young 
major and lieutenant-colonel now to be, was of a 
far finer character : he who knows not men is igno- 
rant of the first principles of knowledge. It was 
possession of this masterful knowledge that made 



6o George Washington 

the Virginia officer, from the first, master of the 
Convention, master of Congress, master of the com- 
bined armies of the United RepubHc, and master at 
last, and for as long as he would, of the supreme 
governmental forces of the nation. 

Washington's own explanation of his mission to 
the Indians and their " Half King " may be gath- 
ered from his address to them : 

*' Brothers, I have called you together in Council by 
order of your Brother, the Governor of Virginia, to 
acquaint you, that I am sent, with all possible Dispatch, 
to visit, and deliver a Letter to the French Command- 
ant, of very great Importance to your Brothers, the 
Ejiglish; and I dare say, to you, their Friends and 
allies. 

" I was desired, Brothers, by your Brother the Gov- 
ernor, to call upon you, the Sachems of the Nations, 
to inform you of it, and to ask your Advice and As- 
sistance to proceed the nearest and best Road to the 
French. You see, Brothers, I have gotten thus far 
on my Journey. 

" His Honour likewise desired me to apply to you 
for some of your young Men, to conduct and provide 
Provisions for us on our Way ; and be a safeguard 
against those French Indians who have taken up the 
hatchet against us. I have spoken this particularly to 
you Brothers, because his Honour our Governor treats 
you as good Friends and Allies ; and holds you in 
great Esteem. To confirm what I have said, I give 
you this String of Wampum." ^ 

All through the Journal and its matter-of-fact en- 

^ Ford's Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 19. 



Washing-ton's University 6i 

tries, the reader catches vivid foreshadowings of the 
coming man, who was swiftly developing out of the 
dutiful son and the sturdy youth into a character 
tenacious of purpose, rugged in its relations with 
antagonistic forces, fond of battling with difficulties 
that seemed to others surpassing their strength, and 
Lacedemonian in its firmness and inflexibility. 
Over the frozen wilderness sped these young feet, 
unconscious of suffering, unwearied in the pursuit of 
their hopeful mission, through miry swamps, over 
unbeaten tracks and trackless mountains, '' shod 
with the preparation of the gospel of peace " indeed, 
but ready at a moment's notice to carry their owner 
into the thick of some savage fight, or into the 
dreaded shades where at any moment the flash of the 
tomahawk, the whizz of the deadly bone-arrow, or 
the crack of the clumsy flint-lock would startle the 
everlasting silence and make it articulate with hid- 
eous noises. For scores and scores of leagues the 
young traveller and his interpreters fought their 
way through bush and bramble, through wire-grass 
and rope-like vines, through harsh autumnal woods, 
crisp and sere in the clutch of frost, through copses 
where the dogwood glimmered milkwhite in May, 
now desolate and forlorn, and where the redbud and 
Indian pink burned like flame in springtime — now 
frozen to a crisp in the icy air of November; only 
stopping for meat and drink and rest; up with the 
birds, off with the startled deer, ceaselessly journey- 
ing till they reached the vicinity of the French Fort 
Duquesne, where now the great city of Pittsburg 



62 George Washington 

stands, " interviewed " the French commandant and 
brought from him a specious message informing 
Dinwiddie of the French claims and aspirations. 

On this expedition, Washington reveals himself 
as the pioneer diplomat of his time, conducting 
thorny negotiations in languages which he did not 
understand, and yet managing to explain himself to, 
and to understand, the forest Talleyrands and Met- 
ternichs by whom he was beset. The guile of the 
Indian nature was as intelligible to him as its dis- 
trust and superstition. Since 1656, the Washington 
clan had been studying Indian methods, Indian war- 
fare, Indian customs and habits on the Northern 
Neck, and back in the picturesque Shenandoah wil- 
derness where now and in neighbouring Pennsyl- 
vania nearly five hundred thousand Scotch-Irish 
had arrived, fresh from Irish Ulster ; and this study, 
hereditary and personal, had not been lost on the 
impressionable soldier. It was in just such a school 
that the generals of the Civil War graduated — Lee 
and Grant and Jackson, Custer and Fitzhugh Lee, 
and, earlier, the soldier Presidents, Jackson and 
Taylor. American military history abounds in self- 
educated soldiers who, like Washington, got their 
training on the plains, in the backwoods, at the forks 
of rushing rivers where rude forts were built, and in 
the flying wigwam where the fugitive democracy of 
the woods held perennial council. 

The heroic annals of New England history are 
no less full of these striking figures than the annals 



Washington's University 63 

of those softer climes which developed the Johns- 
ton, Marion, and Sumter. 

The painstaking youth, who had bent painfully 
over his legal forms and documents, bills of sale, 
forms for wills, surveyor's diagrams and mathemat- 
ical calculations, copying laboriously every mis- 
spelt word or misplaced capital, had not gone 
through that trial of patience, unaffected or inat- 
tentive. The patience, skill, practical knowledge, 
and useful information thus acquired in boyhood, 
now widened out into that deeper and finer knowl- 
edge which was to prove invaluable to his country- 
men. 

Hurrying back to Williamsburg, where the 
burgesses were in session, he hastily wrote out his 
journal in twenty-four hours, and informed the Gov- 
ernor of the plans and projects of the French at Fort 
Le Boeuf. 



CHAPTER V 

PROLOGUE TO A FOREST TRAGEDY 

^^ I\ A Y inclinations," wrote the young Washing- 
i V 1 ton to Colonel William Fitzhugh, '' are 
strongly bent to arms "; and, in a letter to Dinwid- 
die, of about the same date, remarks : '' I have a con- 
stitution hardy enough to encounter and undergo the 
most severe trials, and I flatter myself, resolution 
to face what any man durst, as shall be proved when 
it comes to the test." 

The test was close at hand. 

The publication of Washington's Journal, now 
an exceedingly rare book, of almost priceless value, 
and its perusal by the governors of the neighbouring 
provinces, roused these sleepy commonwealths to the 
danger of a situation which threatened every mo- 
ment to become more critical. The aggressions of 
the French, their advance down into the Ohio Val- 
ley — La Belle Riviere as they called it — had to be 
stopped. How could Virginia do it? Washington 
had described an admirable site for a fort, at the 
forks where the Monongahela and the Alleghany 
rush together to form the Ohio, in western Pennsyl- 
vania. A fort built here, he recommended, would 
constitute the very gateway of the West, the key to 
the situation, commanding and unlocking the vast 

64 



Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 65 

regions that no foot had yet trodden, except maybe 
that of the Jesuit, fur-trader, or Indian of the Miami 
or the Scioto. The French already held the other 
gateways to this Promised Land, at Fort Niagara, in 
western New York, and at Detroit and Green Bay; 
it was their evident intention to make the chain of 
exclusion complete, by establishing themselves at 
Fort Le Boeuf, or some stronghold not inferior in 
strength, that would shut the English out of this 
favoured territory, and confine them for ever to the 
ocean side of the continent, east of the AUeghanies. 

Governor Dinwiddie was quick to grasp the wis- 
dom of Washington's plan, and commissioned the 
immediate raising and equipment of two companies, 
of one hundred men each, one of which he was 
charged to command, while the other was entrusted 
to his lieutenant, William Trent (Benjamin Frank- 
lin's trading partner in west Pennsylvania). Trent 
was ordered to occupy and fortify the forks of the 
two rivers where Pittsburg now stands, and make 
the place impregnable against the roving bands of 
French, Canadians, and Indians, who had begun to 
infest the region, burying, wherever they went, 
leaden plates inscribed with the name and claims of 
his Most Christian Majesty, Louis XV, King of 
France. 

War had not yet openly broken out between the 
two great powers, for the ink of the signatories to 
the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was scarcely dry on 
the vellums; but a feeling of intense suspicion and 
irritability began to show itself, and, in the absence 



66 George Washing-ton 

of explicit information in these distant parts, no 
man knew at any given time what had happened 
across the ocean, or how Hon and Hly stood to each 
other. A universal covetousness possessed men's 
minds; greed of land, greed of gold, greed of every- 
thing within sight, held men's souls in its grip of 
steel ; the boundless '' desire of the eyes " and '' pride 
of life " cast its spell over the eighteenth century and 
bewitched its wits. 

Treaties crumbled at a touch, friable as inciner- 
ated paper; obligations were flung overboard like 
old shoes, worn-out and worthless; the smile of the 
diplomat supplanted the oath of the sovereign; and 
the cabinets of kings became subterranean labora- 
tories of intrigue, where the sunlight never pene- 
trated. The Watteau-ised civilisation of France, 
snickering and sneering behind its fans, had lost all 
vitality, and assumed the thousand affectations that 
smile at us out of the powder and paint and gal- 
lantries of the Pompadours, the sentimentalities of 
Rousseau, and a little later, the Sorrows of Werther. 
England was in the throes of that tedious Georgian 
age which almost drove men mad with its dulness, 
and ultimately provoked the cynic smile of Walpole 
and Hogarth. Pope had ceased to lash the dunces 
with his poetic scourge, while in Gray's soul were 
just beginning to gather — symbolically enough — the 
exquisite strains of his '' Elegy " — the tired, hlase, 
worn-out, senile courts of Europe, disgusted with 
themselves and their Thirty Years' War over mat- 
ters no more important than '' The Rape of a Lock," 



Prolog-ue to a Forest Trag-edy 67 

seemed to look wistfully over the Atlantic for relief, 
for a new '' sensation," for something to shake them 
out of their stupor; and here, in this fresh, wild, 
unconventional, undiplomatic country, they found it, 
in a little while, in full measure. 

The formation of the Ohio Company, for the 
opening and exploitation of the regions between the 
Lakes and the Mississippi, was a pivotal point in 
the diplomacy of the West. A London charter 
granted the company five hundred thousand acres 
of land and immense immunities and privileges of 
various sorts, on condition that it would, within a 
certain period, settle one hundred immigrant fam- 
ilies within the region indicated, and thus fix the 
relations of the territory to Great Britain. This 
was, indeed, the incipiency of the " North-West 
Territory " claim, and was fraught with mighty 
consequences. If the French got there first and af- 
fixed their leaden plates, so to speak, to the face of 
this territory, warning others away as diplomatic or 
aggressive trespassers, this vast and opulent region 
would, treaty or no treaty, fall into the hands of the 
powerful family whose alliance covered all France, 
Spain, Southern Italy, Mexico, and South America. 
Though separated three thousand miles by the sinu- 
ous zigzag of river, lake, and mountain, Canada and 
Louisiana, the head and the heel of Latin posses- 
sions in America, would soon be joined, and the thin 
and scattered chain of settlements, which connected 
them, would rivet themselves together in links that 
could not be broken, and a Chinese Wall of exclu- 



68 George Washing-ton 

sion be built up to dyke the inundation of English 
immigration, irresistibly flowing down the Alle- 
ghany slopes. Lawrence and Augustine Washing- 
ton, brothers of George, were deeply interested in 
the Ohio Company; and here perhaps we catch a 
selfish motive — family interest — behind the glow of 
mere military ardour, actuating this young officer 
in his almost exuberant ambition to do and to dare, 
at this critical moment, for his native State. He 
makes curious entries in his day-book as he succes- 
sively climbs the grades of captain, major, lieu- 
tenant-colonel, and colonel, indirectly showing that 
it could not have been the pay that attracted him to 
this service: as captain in 1754, 8 shillings per day; 
as major till March 20, 1754, 10 shillings per day; 
as lieutenant-colonel to June i, 1754, 12 shillings, 
6 pence; as colonel to September i, 1754, 15 shil- 
lings per day; and, in 1755, as colonel of the 
Virginia regiment, 30 shillings a day. 

These rapid promotions show incidentally, too, the 
worth and value of his services. In a year, he ad- 
vanced through the entire gamut of subaltern posi- 
tions, and when Braddock arrived in February, 
1755, he would have been second only to the com- 
manding general, had not his self-respect and 
natural pride caused him to resign his position, on 
an intimation from the Governor that a new Vir- 
ginia regiment of 10 companies, with 100 men each, 
was to be formed, no one captain of which should 
out-rank another. 




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c^^j^S^ .%^7^ i"^ o^/C^^>^/7^6 , 



'799 




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fOUR DAYS BErOR£ MIS DCATN /^t6Y 



FACSIMILES OF WASHINGTON'S AUTOGRAPHS. 



Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 6q 

Washington's instructions from Dinwiddie read 
as follows: 

" Having all things in readiness, you are to use all 
expedition in proceeding to the Fork of the Ohio with 
the men under command, and there you are to finish 
and complete in the best manner and as soon as you 
possibly can, the Fort which I expect is there already 
begun by the Ohio Company. You are to act on the 
defensive, but in case any attempts are made to ob- 
struct the works or interrupt our settlements by any 
persons whatsoever, you are to restrain all such of- 
fenders and in case of resistance to make prisoners of, 
or kill and destroy them." 

Washington, however, was not put in supreme 
command of even this little band of 200 or 300 
Spartans, whose Leonidas was Colonel Joshua Fry, 
an Oxford graduate described by Dinwiddie as 
" a man of good sense and one of our best mathe- 
maticians," a man who had been associated with 
Peter Jefferson, father of the President, in the 
preparation of an esteemed map of Virginia, and 
who became, in 1754, colonel of the Virginia regi- 
ment. Washington was second in command. 

The expedition failed ; Colonel Fry died at Win- 
chester in May, 1754; Trent's command was sur- 
rounded and captured by Contrecceur, the French 
commander, at the Forks (then called Duquesne, in 
honour of the Marquis Duquesne, Governor-General 
of Canada). The supreme command devolved upon 
the young Virginian, now twenty-two years old. 

The frightful difficulties of the situation — wan- 



70 George Washing-ton 

dering around the woods almost without food and 
ammunition, through pathless forests, over track- 
less mountains, across rivers difficult to ford, hew- 
ing roads through the living trees, thick as an em- 
battled host on every side, the air filled with vague 
rumours of swarms of French and Indians, the ab- 
sence of authentic news of any kind in the dense, 
dumb, endless woods, about which both forces 
floundered as about some Hyrcanian Bog or Slough 
of Despond : these difficulties may be best gathered 
from Washington's and Dinwiddie's own words : 

" I set out with forty men before ten," reports Wash- 
ington, " and [it] was from that time till near sunrise 
before we reached the Indians' camp, having marched 
in [a] small path, through a heavy rain, and night as 
dark as it is possible to conceive. We were frequently 
tumbling one over another, and often so lost, that 
fifteen or twenty minutes' search would not find the 
path again. 

*' When we came to the Half-King, I counselled 
with him, and got his assent to go hand-in-hand and 
strike the French. Accordingly, himself, Monacatoo- 
cha, and a few other Indians set out with us ; and when 
we came to the place where the tracks were, the Half- 
King sent two Indians to follow their tracks, and dis- 
cover their lodgement, which they did about half a 
mile from the road, in a very obscure place surrounded 
with rocks. I, thereupon, in conjunction with the Half- 
King and Monacatoocha, formed a disposition to at- 
tack them on all sides, which we accordingly did, and, 
after an engagement of about fifteen minutes, we 
killed ten, wounded one, and took twenty-one prisoners. 



Prolog-ue to a Forest Trag^edy 71 

Among those that were killed was Monsieur Jumon- 
ville, the commander ; principal officers taken is Mon- 
sieur Drouillon and Mons'r La Force, who your Hon- 
our has often heard me speak of as a bold enterprising 
man, and a person of great subtlety and cunning. 
With these are two cadets. These officers pretend 
they were coming on an embassy ; but the absurdity 
of this pretext is too glaring, as your Honour will see 
by the Instructions and Summons enclosed. These 
instructions were to reconnoitre the country, roads, 
creeks, etc., to Potomack, which they were about to do. 
These enterprising men were purposely choose out to 
get intelligence, which they were to send back by some 
brisk despatches, with mention of the day that they 
were to serve the summons ; which could be through 
no other view, than to get a sufficient reinforcement 
to fall upon us immediately after. This, with several 
other reasons, induced all the officers to believe firmly, 
that they were sent as spies, rather than any thing 
else, and has occasioned my sending them as prisoners, 
tho they expected or at least had some faint hope, of 
being continued as ambassadors. They, finding where 
we were encamped, instead of coming up in a publick 
manner, sought out one of the most secret retirements, 
fitter for a deserter than an ambassador to encamp in, 
stayed there two or 3 days, sent spies to reconnoitre 
our camp, as we are told, tho they deny it. Their whole 
body moved back near 2 miles, sent off two runners 
to acquaint Contrecceur with our strength, and where 
we were encamped, etc. Now 36 men would almost 
have been a retinue for a princely ambassador, instead 
of a petit. Why did they, if their designs were open, 
stay so long within 5 miles of us, without delivering 



72 Georg-e Washington 

his ambassy, or acquainting me with it? His waiting 
could be with no other design, than to get [a] detach- 
ment to enforce the summons, as soon as it was given. 
They had no occasion to send out spies, for the name 
of ambassador is sacred among all nations ; but it was 
by the track of these spies, that they were discovered, 
and we got intelligence of them. They would not have 
retired two miles back without delivering the sum- 
mons, and sought a skulking-place (which, to do them 
justice, was done with great judgment), but for some 
special reason. Besides, the summons is so insolent, 
and savours so much of gascoigny, that if two men only 
had come openly to deliver it, it was too great indul- 
gence to have sent them back. 

" The sense of the Half-King on this subject is, that 
they have bad hearts, and that this is a mere pretence ; 
they never designed to have come to us but in a hostile 
manner, and if we were so foolish as let them go again, 
he never would assist us in taking another of them. 
Besides, loosing La Force, I really think, would lead 
more to our disservice, than 50 other men, as he is a 
person whose active spirit leads him into all parleys, 
and brought him acquainted with all parts, add to this 
a perfect use of the Indian tongue, and ye influence 
with the Indians. 

" He ingenuously enough confessed, that, as soon as 
he saw the commission and instructions, that he be- 
lieved, and then said he expected some such tendency, 
tho he pretends to say he does not believe the com- 
mander had any other but a good design. In this en- 
gagement we had only one man killed and two or three 
wounded, among which was Lieutenant Waggener 
slightly, — a most miraculous escape, as our right wing 



Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 73 

was much exposed to their fire and received it all. 
The Half-King received your Honour's speech very 
kind, but desired me to inform you, that he could not 
leave his people at this time, thinking them in great 
danger. He is now gone to the Crossing for their 
families, to bring to our camp; and desired I would 
send some men and horses to assist them up, which 
I have accordingly done ; sent 30 men and upwards 
of twenty horses. He says, if your Honour has any 
thing to say, you may communicate by me, etc., and 
that, if you have a present for them, it may be kept to 
another occasion, after sending up some things for 
their immediate use. He has declared to [me he 
would] send these Frenchmen's scalps, with a hatchet, 
to all the nations of Indians in union with them, and 
did that very day give a hatchet, and a large belt of 
wampum, to a Delaware man to carry to Shingiss. 
He promised me to send down the river for all the 
Mingoes and Shawanese to our camp, where I expect 
him to-morrow with thirty or forty men, with their 
wives and children. To confirm what he has said here, 
he has sent your Honor a string of wampum. 

" As these runners went off to the fort on Sunday 
last, I shall expect every hour to be attacked, and by 
unequal numbers, which I must withstand if there are 
five to one ; or else I fear the consequence will be, that 
we shall lose the Indians, if we suffer ourselves to be 
drove back. I despatched an express immediately to 
Colonel Fry with this intelligence, desiring him to 
send reinforcements with all imaginable despatch. 

" Your Honor may depend I will not be surprised, 
let them come at what hour they will; and this is as 
much as I can promise. But my best endeavours shall 



74 Georg-e Washing-ton 

not be wanting to deserve more. I doubt not, but if 
you hear I am beaten, but you will, at the same [time,] 
hear that we have done our duty, in fighting as long 
[as] there was a possibility of hope. 

" I have sent Lieutenant West, accompanied with 
Mr. Splitdorph and a guard of 20 men, to conduct the 
prisoners in, and I believe the officers have acquainted 
him what answer to return your Honour. Monsieur 
La Force and Monsieur Drouillon beg to be recom- 
mended to your Honor's notice, and I have prom- 
ised they will meet with all the favour due to impris- 
oned officers. I have show'd all the respect I could 
to them here, and have given some necessary cloathing, 
by which I have disfurnished myself ; for, having 
brought no more than two or three shirts from Will's 
Creek, that we might be light, I was ill provided to 
furnish them. I am, etc. 

" P. S. I have neither seen nor heard any particu- 
lar account of the Twigtwees since I came on these 
waters. We have already begun a palisadoed fort, 
and hope to have it up to-morrow. I must beg leave 
to acquaint your Honour, that Captain Vanbraam and 
Ensign Peyrouny has behaved extremely well since 
they came out, and I hope will meet with your Hon- 
or's favor." ^ 

This little skirmish was really the " cannon ball " 
whose discharge, as Voltaire said, " set Europe on 
fire," and was heard all over the world. The death 
of Jumonville led to Braddock, and Braddock led 
to Montcalm and Wolfe and the downfall of France 
in America in 1763, after seventy years of struggle. 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 82. 



Prolog-ue to a Forest Tragedy 75 

Says Ford : '' Meantime the garrison at Duquesne 
had received additions, and Coulon de VilUers, a 
brother of Jumonville, had arrived from Montreal 
with a large force of Indians." It was at once de- 
termined to " avenge the murder of Jumonville " 
and to attack the English whether found on soil 
claimed by the French or on territory that was 
English beyond any doubt. The party, under the 
command of Villiers, reached Red Stone Creek on 
June 30th, and, on July 2d, the camp at Gist's so 
recently abandoned by Washington. From the In- 
dian scouts the position of the English was soon 
determined, and on the next day the two forces 
met. Washington had made a small trench for pro- 
tection, but it proved of little service, as his men were 
exposed to a cross-fire from the French and In- 
dians. What followed is best told in the language 
of Governor Dinwiddle : 

" Immediately they [the French] appeared in sight 
of our camp, and fired at our people at a great dis- 
tance, which did no harm. Our small forces were 
drawn up in good order to receive them before their 
entrenchments, but did not return their first fire, re- 
serving it till they came nigher. The enemy advanced 
irregularly within 60 yards of our forces, and then 
made a second discharge, and observing they did not 
intend to attack them in open field, they retired within 
their trenches, and reserved their fire, thinking from 
their numbers they would force their trenches, but 
finding they made no attempt of this kind, the Colonel 
gave orders to our people to fire on the enemy, which 



76 George Washing-ton 

they did with great briskness, and the officers declare 
this engagement continued from ii o'clock till 8 
o'clock at night, they being without shelter, rainy 
weather, and their trenches to the knee in water, where- 
as the French were sheltered all round our camp by 
trees ; from thence they galled our people all the time 
as above. About 8 o'clock at night the French called 
out to parley; our people mistrusting their sincerity, 
from their numbers and other advantages, refused. At 
last they desired [us] to send an officer that could 
speak French, and they gave their parole for his safe 
return to them, on which the Commander sent two offi- 
cers to whom they gave their proposals. . . . From our 
few numbers and our bad situation, they were glad 
to accept them ; otherways were determined to lose 
their lives rather than be taken prisoners. The next 
morning a party from the French came and took pos- 
session of our encampment, and our people marched 
off with colors flying and beat of drum ; but there ap- 
peared a fresh party of lOO Indians to join the French, 
who galled our people much, and with difficulty were 
restrained from attacking them ; however, they pil- 
fered our people's baggage, and at the beginning of 
the engagement the French killed all the horses, cattle 
and live creatures they saw, so that our forces were 
obliged to carry off the wounded men on their backs 
to some distance from the place of the engagement, 
where they left them with a guard ; the scarcity of 
provisions made them make quick marches to get 
among the inhabitants which was about 6o miles of 
bad road." ^ 

^ Ford, Writings of George JVashington, vol. i, p. 119. 



Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 77 

The capture of Colonel Washington and his little 
band by superior French forces at Fort Necessity, 
in midsummer of 1754, almost exactly a year before 
Braddock's defeat near the same place the following 
summer, so far from rousing the resentment of the 
burgesses, as one might have expected, drew from 
them the heartiest appreciation of Colonel Wash- 
ington's heroism in holding out so long, and a vote 
of thanks for his gallant conduct. 

In a famous postscript to a letter to his brother, 
describing Jumonville's death a few months before, 
Washington wrote: 

" P. S. I fortunately escaped without any wound, 
for the right wing, where I stood, was exposed to and 
received all the enemy's fire, and it was the part where 
the man was killed, and the rest wounded. I heard the 
bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something 
charming in the sound." 

From the London Magazine, August, 1754- 

" In the express, which Major Washington de- 
spatched on his preceding little victory (the skirmish 
with Jumonville), he concluded with these words, — 
*"/ heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is 
something charming in the sound.' On hearing of 
this the King said sensibly, — 'He would not say so, 
if he had been used to hear nmnyf However, this 
brave braggart learned to blush for his rhodomontade, 
and, desiring to serve General Braddock as aid-de- 
camp, acquitted himself nobly." 

It was seldom, indeed, that the reticent Virginian 
broke into such rare hyperbole as this over the 



78 George Washing-ton 

charm of the whizzing bullet, whose music was to 
lie henceforth the chief companion of his military 
and administrative life. The absurd charge brought 
by the French, that Washington had '' assassi- 
nated " Jumonville in the skirmish preliminary to 
the surrender, was vigorously resented and abso- 
lutely refuted, by the Virginian in a detailed com- 
munication to the Governor. 

One good purpose this first humiliation of Wash- 
ington served : it rang through the colonies like an 
alarm-bell and aroused Pennsylvania, Maryland, 
New York, and Massachusetts to the need of im- 
mediate co-operation, combination, concentration 
of ways and means, and united resistance to the 
now overshadowing peril of the Western frontier. 
Boundary disputes were forgotten ; lagging legisla- 
tures awoke to the extremity of the danger; con- 
tentions over rank and pay ceased for a moment; 
abundant means were voted by the people's repre- 
sentatives at Williamsburg, Philadelphia, Albany, 
and Boston, and aroused public sentiment flamed 
forth, like a sudden conflagration, in favour of quick 
and concentrated effort in the West. 

France, at this time, had the reputation of being 
as irresistible on land as England was resistless at 
sea ; the navy of the one, with its two hundred war- 
ships, might prance over the seas, but not over the 
measureless forests of America, while the 180,000 
veterans of France, lineal descendants of the heroes 
who had served under Turenne and Vendome, 
Prince Eugene and Marshal Saxe, might well in- 



Prolog-ue to a Forest Tragedy 79 

spire a dread that had no bounds, should any con- 
siderable number of them board the hundred war- 
ships of the French navy, the " ocean greyhounds " 
of the day — and leap over bounding vv^aves from 
Brest and Rochefort to Quebec and Montreal. 

And this was precisely what happened. Eighteen 
French warships with three thousand regulars 
started out of these harbours and made for the mouth 
of the St. Lawrence as fast as wind and waves could 
carry them. Almost simultaneously, an English 
fleet under Vice-Admiral Boscawen set sail in pur- 
suit, to head off this formidable armada and destroy 
it off the coast of Newfoundland. Three French 
ships alone were captured, the rest escaping 
triumphantly out of the fog into the broad and 
hospitable jaws of the mighty river, which bore 
them easily up into the very heart of the continent. 

Even in those days of slow-travelling Rumour, it 
was not long before the bad news from Virginia 
reached the Downing Street of the day, and created 
consternation there. An officer who flits fitfully 
across the pages of Franklin's Autobiography and 
Horace Walpole's correspondence — General Ed- 
ward Braddock — attracted the attention of the 
Foreign Office, and was put in command of the 
44th and 48th regiments, with orders to sail from 
Cork to Hampton Roads, without further loss of 
time. The regiments, accustomed to the ways of 
civilised European warfare with civilised foes, 
were loth enough to traverse the stormy seas in 
mid-winter, and march into the spectral forests of 



8o George Washington 

the Alleghanies, to face the hideous Red Skins in 
their very dens. General Braddock himself left 
England with a heavy heart, weighed down with 
a strange presentiment. 

Braddock was a Perthshire Scotchman, a sin- 
gular mixture of rough honesty, insolence, igno- 
rance, personal valour, and brutality, — a Miles 
Gloriosns, of the type graphically portrayed by the 
Roman comedian, yet touched with traits that served 
to enhance the profound pathos and paradox of his 
career. 

He smiled derisively when Franklin, " the sub- 
lime of common sense," told him of the dangers of 
Indian warfare, the possibilities of ambuscades, and 
the wiliness of this aboriginal foe who, more like 
a bird of the air or a beast of the fields, flitted, 
wraithlike, among his forests as one of its beloved 
children, and appeared and disappeared with the 
swiftness of a dream. 

The choleric Scotchman, unimaginative as he 
was, and unskilled in any form of warfare except 
that in which he had figured at Gibraltar, in the 
gilded manoeuvres of the Coldstream Guards whom 
he joined as a lad of 15, in 17 10, or in dancing at- 
tendance on the mistress whom Walpole describes, 
pooh-poohed the statements of the wise American, 
then Postmaster-General of Pennsylvania, and set 
him down, doubtless, as a Quaker poltroon. He 
disclosed to Franklin a veritable milkmaid's dream, 
in the words of the sagacious autobiographer : 



Prolog-ue to a Forest Tragedy 8i 

*' In conversation with him one day, he was giving 
me some account of his intended progress. ' After 
taking Fort Duquesne,' said he, ' I am to proceed to 
Niagara; and, having taken that, to Frontenac, if the 
season will allow time, and I suppose it will ; for Du- 
quesne can hardly detain me above three or four days ; 
and then I see nothing that can obstruct my march to 
Niagara.' 

'' Having before revolved in my mind," continues 
Franklin, " the long line his army must make in their 
march by a very narrow road, to be cut for them 
through the woods and bushes, and also what I had 
read of a former defeat of fifteen hundred French, 
who invaded the Illinois country, I had conceived some 
doubts and some fears for the event of the campaign. 
But I ventured only to say, To be sure. Sir, if you 
arrive well before Duquesne, with these fine troops, 
so well-provided with artillery, the fort, though 'com- 
pletely fortified, and assisted with a very strong gar- 
rison, can probably make but a short resistance. The 
only danger I apprehend of obstruction to your march, 
is from the ambuscades of the Indians, who, by con- 
stant practice, are dexterous in laying and executing 
them ; and the slender line, near four miles long, which 
your army must make, may expose it to be attacked 
by surprise in its flanks, and to be cut like a thread 
into several pieces, which, from their distance, cannot 
come up in time to support each other. 

*' He smiled at my ignorance, and replied, ' These 
savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your 
raw American militia ; but upon the King's regular 
and disciplined troops, Sir, it is impossible they should 
make any impression.' I was conscious of an impro- 



82 George Washing-ton 

priety in my disputing with a military man in matters 
of his profession, and said no more. 

" This General was, I think, a brave man, and might 
probably have made a figure as a good officer in some 
European war. But he had too much self-confidence, 
too high an opinion of the validity of regular troops, 
and too mean a one of both Americans and Indians. 
George Croghan, our Indian interpreter, joined him 
on his march with one hundred of those people, who 
might have been of great use to his army as guides 
and scouts, if he had treated them kindly ; but he 
slighted and neglected them, and they gradually left 
him." ^ 

By February, 1755, " the cruel, crawling waves " 
had wafted the five hundred gallant Britishers 
from the soft, green pastures and shining Shannon 
of Ireland, to the beautiful silver expanse of Hamp- 
ton Roads and the Potomac, where their doom 
awaited them. 

All the elements of pity and terror, maintained 
by Aristotle to be the foundation of Tragedy, were 
here in abundance — reckless courage, personal 
gallantry, unquestioning confidence, high and in- 
vincible purpose to quell for ever the Gallic preten- 
sions, and pluck the Bourbon lily up by the roots 
from places immemorially sacred to the Saxon rose. 

Dinwiddie was charmed with the General, his 
fellow-countryman, and with his show of force- 
fulness and resource. A council of five governors 
— Sharpe of Maryland, Shirley of Massachusetts, 

* Sparks, Life of Franklin, vol. i, p. 189. 



Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 83 

Delancy of New York, Morris of Pennsylvania, and 
Dinwiddie of Virginia, met at Alexandria to con- 
cert measures in harmony with the commander- 
in-chief, to crush the enemy in Acadia, at Crown 
Point, at Fort Niagara, and at Fort Duquesne. 

The wildest and least winsome of these opera- 
tions, those against Duquesne, fell naturally to the 
lot of Braddock, who now that they were about to 
begin, fell into a frame of furious petulance and 
impatience that* no proper preparations had been 
made for them by the colonial governments; no 
horses or waggons were to be had, food for the sol- 
diers was, so to speak, still growing in the green 
maize-fields around, or running wild in four-legged 
independence in the Virginia woods, while their 
six hundred pack-horses fed on the leaves of the 
trees. He abused all Americans, except the men 
of Massachusetts and of Virginia, and among the 
serenely stupid Friends, in their imperturbable ob- 
stinacy, found only Franklin to praise. 

And, but for Franklin's assistance in procuring a 
hundred and fifty waggons and their accoutrements 
from the stubborn and penurious Germans and 
Quakers of his province, he could not have moved 
a step. 

Here as elsewhere in this remarkable Revolution, 
Franklin and Washington emerge together, stand- 
ing in a blaze of light, even at this early period, as 
the right and left arm, the battle-axe and the cleaver 
of the Revolutionary movement. 



84 George Washington 

There was twenty-six years difference in their 
ages; Franklin was the kind of man that always 
seems born old, between whom and common sense 
there was a pre-established harmony, who infallibly 
takes the right view of things from the start, and 
once taken, never deserts it for more plausible or 
more fallacious views. Beneath his smile of benig- 
nity lurked a world of shrewdness that had at its 
beck and call an epigrammatic felicity of phrase, an 
aptitude for coining itself into axioms that became 
proverbs, and proverbs that wrote themselves, 
almost automatically, into the head-lines of copy- 
books, to be endlessly repeated in the myriad school- 
boy handwritings of the time. He was his own 
Poor Richard's Almanac, incarnate. Massachusetts, 
quick, keen, humorous, full of dry wit and intel- 
lectual virility — Hosea Biglow in nascendo — tin- 
gled in every vein, shed humorous philosophy over 
every discussion, illuminated every conversation 
with point and epigram. Brilliantly original in 
scientific research, endlessly inventive in the appli- 
cation of his knowledge to the common conveniences 
of life, Franklin opened his wise old child's eye on 
things around him as naively at eighty as he did at 
twenty-six, while the wit and sense of the genera- 
tions before him seemed to concentrate themselves, 
and run down into a mould which was the incarna- 
tion of this new American man. 

How different was Washington, in whom Vir- 
ginia, with all its faults and nobilities, its high 




BENJAMIN FRANKLIN IN 1779. 
From an oil-painting in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 



Prolog-ue to a Forest Trag-edy 85 

seriousness and lofty sense of duty, its martial ardour 
and generous, chivalrous ways, was as truly typified, 
as was the clever New England spirit clarified and 
concentrated in the printer-electrician, diplomat, 
and philosopher. 



CHAPTER VI 

IN THE TRAGICAL WOOD 

BRADDOCK had heard of the fame of this fine, 
young colonel, not only at Williamsburg, but 
more probably in London drawing-rooms, where 
his gallantry had often been the subject of conversa- 
tion. He was the one figure in all Virginia then, 
that the Scotch Commander could not afford to 
overlook, though he was surrounded by an imposing 
retinue of captains, of high officials like Sir John 
Sinclair and Sir Peter Halket, and functionaries, 
half military, half civilian, who hoped to share in 
the glories of this new invincible Armada. 

He was immediately and most courteously in- 
vited to serve on General Braddock's staff, and to 
form one of his military family. The letters that 
passed between them are equally creditable to both 
sides : 

'' Williamsburg, 2 March, 1755. 
" Sir, 

" The General having been informed that you ex- 
pressed some desire to make the campaign, but that 
you declined it upon some disagreeableness that you 
thought might arise from the regulation of command, 
has ordered me to acquaint you, that he will be very 
glad of your company in his family, by which all in- 
conveniences of that kind will be obviated. 

86 



In the Tragical Wood 87 

'' I shall think myself very happy to form an ac- 
quaintance with a person so universally esteemed, and 
shall use every opportunity of assuring you how much 
I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, 

'' Robert Orme, Aid-de-camp." 

" To Robert Orme 

"Mount Vernon, 15 March, 1755. 
" Sir, 

" I was not favored with your polite letter, of the 
2d inst., until yesterday ; acquainting me with the no- 
tice his Excellency, General Braddock, is pleased to 
honor me with, by kindly inviting me to become one 
of his family the ensuing campaign. It is true, Sir, 
that I have, ever since I declined my late command, 
expressed an inclination to serve the ensuing cam- 
paign as a volunteer ; and this inclination is not a 
little increased, since it is likely to be conducted by a 
gentleman of the General's experience. 

" But, besides this, and the laudable desire I may 
have to serve, with my best abilities, my King and 
country, I must be ingenuous enough to confess, that 
I am not a little biassed by selfish considerations. To 
explain, Sir, I wish earnestly to attain some knowl- 
edge in the military profession, and believing a more 
favorable opportunity cannot offer, than to serve 
under a gentleman of General Braddock's abilities 
and experience, it does, as you may reasonably sup- 
pose, not a little contribute to influence my choice. 
But, Sir, as I have taken the liberty to express my 
sentiments so freely, I shall beg your indulgence while 
I add, that the only bar, which can check me in the 
pursuit of this object, is the inconveniences that must 



88 Georg-e Washington 

necessarily result from some proceedings which hap- 
pened a little before the General's arrival, and which, 
in some measure, had abated the ardor of my desires, 
and determined me to lead a life of retirement, into 
which I was just entering, at no small expense, when 
your favour was presented to me. 

" But, as I shall do myself the honor of waiting 
upon his Excellency, as soon as I hear of his arrival 
at Alexandria, (and would sooner, were I certain where 
to find him,) I shall decline saying any thing further 
on this head till then; begging you will be pleased 
to assure him, that I shall always retain a grateful 
sense of the favour with which he is pleased to hon- 
or me, and that I should have embraced this oppor- 
tunity of writing to him, had I not recently addressed 
a congratulatory letter to him on his safe arrival in 
this country. I flatter myself you will favour me in 
making a communication of these sentiments. 

" You do me a singular favour, in proposing an ac- 
quaintance. It cannot but be attended with the most 
flattering prospects of intimacy on my part, as you 
may already perceive, by the familiarity and freedom 
with which I now enter upon this correspondence ; a 
freedom, which, even if it is disagreeable, you must ex- 
cuse, as I may lay the blame of it at your door, for 
encouraging me to throw off that restraint, which 
otherwise might have been more obvious in my de- 
portment on such an occasion. 

" The hope of shortly seeing you will be an excuse 
for my not adding more, than that I shall endeavour 
to approve myself worthy of your friendship, and that 
I beg to be esteemed your most obedient servant." ^ 

* Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 141. 



In the Tragical Wood 89 

And so events moved on. Merrily had the leap- 
ing transport-ships sped over the crisping waves, in 
the keen January blasts, out of the picturesque river 
that flowed from the heart of Ireland, full of proud, 
gallant men, never dreaming of defeat, while nat- 
urally dreading an insidious foe. Merrily had they 
come to anchor in the spacious stretches of Hampton 
Water, which receives, as in a mighty bowl, the 
ample flood of the historic James, the very cor 
cordium of the ancient commonwealth; and many 
a famous talk had the two Scotchmen — Dinwiddie 
and Braddock — together, over the sunny Madeira 
and fuming Virginia posset-bowl, confidentially, 
concerning the details of the approaching campaign. 

March passed, however, — April — May ; the lovely 
Virginia spring came and went, mantled in bloom, 
filled with the exquisite scents and perfumes of a 
climate most perfectly mixed of heat and cold; the 
vivid vegetation of early summer had ripened into 
the matronly luxuriance of June, and still the army 
had not started from its place of assembly at Fort 
Cumberland, one hundred and forty miles from Fort 
Duquesne. In the primitive war-tactics of the day, 
no one, wrote Washington in a letter to Warner 
Lewis, knew anything of the strength of the French 
on the Ohio — '' On the Ohio " being an expression as 
void of definitiness then, as " on the Amazon," 
or " on the Congo " would be to us now. The 
country swept away to the West and South in 
one illimitable ocean of leaves and limbs, so dense 
that the stars almost ceased to twinkle through them 



go George Washing-ton 

at night, and the bewildered wanderer might try 
in vain, with rude astrolabe or magnetic needle, to 
fix his bearings. Fifty-two miles beyond Fort 
Cumberland lay Fort Necessity, fatally familiar to 
Washington, as the scene of his capitulation to the 
French only a few months before. No news, only 
the vast and appalling noises of the forest, crossed 
the forty leagues of distance that lay between the 
Monongahela and Will's Creek, where Braddock, 
infuriated at the delays and chafing like a chained 
lion, lay snorting with impatience; behind him, fair 
Virginia, wreathed in the peaceful smoke of endless 
calumet-pipes encircling the generous dinner-tables, 
full of fruits and fragrance and one hundred and 
fifty years of civilisation; before him, the savage 
wood that stretched apparently to infinity, peopled 
with dark forms and glittering eyes that watched 
every movement with the cunning and intensity of 
the hawk, the wolf, and the bear from which, half 
bird, half beast, they traced their fantastic descent. 
About June the 9th they started, cleaving their 
way into the forest with three hundred axes, which 
hacked furiously at the tough stems of oak and 
chestnut, pine, spruce, and maple, levelling a road 
twelve feet wide, through and over underbrush for 
the passage of parks of artillery, heavy waggons, 
pack-horses, stores, ammunition, accoutrements, and 
hospital provisions, vindictively attacking tree- 
trunks, and disrupting the beautiful architecture of 
the forest as they hewed into its living aisles, and 
cleared a sinuous course through its echoing arches. 



In the Tragfical Wood 91 

Travellers through this lovely region of the Union, 
to-day, still admire the magnificent remnants of 
wood and forest that join Pittsburg to Cumberland, 
and that still exist, like the pages of some splendid 
vellum from which vandals have ruthlessly torn the 
finest illustrations. 

Bitterly did Washington, a few months later, 
complain of the slowness of this march. '' In four 
days," he remarks, '' we moved only twelve miles ;" 
in ten days they had hewn their way to Little 
Meadows, thirty miles from the starting point and 
only one fourth of the toilsome way to Duquesne. 

Parching midsummer was at hand when the snows 
of January (the month of their departure from 
Cork) had melted into a mere reminiscence. 

A little before, the mountains of this Alleghany 
region had been white with the wondrous, wild rho- 
dodendron which cleaves the crevices of every rock, 
and covers their nakedness with a mantle of floral 
loveliness, vying with the blush-pink masses of the 
mountain-laurel, to make every cool covert of these 
woods, not carved into altars of emerald by moss 
and fern, beautiful as the Vale of Tempe. 

Strategically, the critics now see that all this hew- 
ing and ploughing through the cruel wilderness was 
a monstrous blunder : Braddock, as Franklin ad- 
vised, should have landed at Philadelphia, advanced 
westward on Duquesne through the thickly-peopled, 
fertile country of Pennsylvania, where the roads 
were good and provisions abundant, and finished 
his campaign triumphantly in six easy weeks. 



92 George Washing-ton 

Four whole months and half of another actually 
elapsed, however, before this dramatic game of 
hide-and-seek in the forest came to an end. 

An eminent historian describes the scene as fol- 
lows: 

''Thus, foot by foot, they advanced into the waste 
of lonely mountains that divided the streams flowing 
to the Atlantic from those flowing to the Gulf of 
Mexico, — a realm of forests ancient as the world. 
The road was but twelve feet wide, and the line of 
march often extended four miles. It was like a thin, 
long, party-coloured snake, red, blue, and brown, 
trailing slowly through the depth of leaves, creeping 
round inaccessible heights, crawling over ridges, mov- 
ing always in dampness and shadow, by rivulets and 
waterfalls, crags and chasms, gorges and shaggy 
steeps. In glimpses only, through jagged boughs and 
flickering leaves, did this wild primeval world reveal 
itself, with its dark green mountains, flecked with the 
morning mist, and its distant summits pencilled in 
dreamy blue. The army passed the main Alleghany, 
Meadow Mountain, and Great Savage Mountain, and 
traversed the funereal pine-forest, afterwards called 
the Shades of Death. No attempt was made to inter- 
rupt their march, though the commandant of Fort 
Duquesne had sent out parties for that purpose." ^ 

In spite of the statement of this eminent writer, 
that Braddock did not rush headlong into an ambus- 
cade, we are forced to take Washington's own 
words, in his official report to Dinwiddie, that he 
did. Says Parkman : 

^ Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. i, p. 205. 



In the Tragical Wood 93 

'' Braddock has been charged with marching bhndly 
into an ambuscade ; but it was not so. There was no 
ambuscade; and had there been one, he would have 
found it. It is true that he did not reconnoitre the 
woods very far in advance of the head of the column ; 
yet, with this exception, he made elaborate dispositions 
to prevent surprise. Several guides, with six Vir- 
ginian light horsemen, led the way. Then, a musket- 
shot behind, came the vanguard; then three hundred 
soldiers under Gage ; then a large body of axe-men, 
under Sir John Sinclair, to open the road; then two 
cannon with tumbrils and tool-waggons; and lastly 
the rear-guard, closing the line, while flanking-par- 
ties ranged the woods on both sides. This was the 
advance-column. The main body followed with little 
or no interval. The artillery and waggons moved along 
the road, and the troops filed through the woods close 
on either hand. Numerous flanking-parties were 
thrown out a hundred yards and more to right and 
left; while, in the space between them and the march- 
ing column, the pack horses and cattle, with their 
drivers, made their way painfully among the trees 
and thickets ; since, had they been allowed to follow 
the road, the line of march would have been too long 
for mutual support. A body of regulars and provin- 
cials brought up the rear." ^ 

Washington had the best means of knowing what 
actually happened, being very near to Braddock, and 
he says explicitly to the Governor : 

"When we came to the place [Frazier's, 7 miles 
^ Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. i, p. 214. 



94 George Washington 

from Duquesne], we were attacked (very unexpected- 
ly) by about 300 French and Indians." 

In the number alone he was mistaken. There were 
900 French, Canadians, Indians, and half-breeds — 
Braddock had started with 2200 men, among whom 
were nine companies of Virginians, of fifty or more 
men each, whose blue uniforms and provincial ways 
excited the derision of the scarlet-coated regulars, 
fresh from their European laurels. The number had 
somehow dwindled to 1300 (according to Wash- 
ington), and these, plunging ignorantly into the 
all-swallowing wilderness, blundered recklessly on 
without ever dreaming of sending out scouts or skir- 
mishers. The Virginians were fully aware of the 
dangers of the movement, for one hundred and 
fifty years of Indian warfare had accustomed them 
to the subtlety of this almost immaterial foe, who 
appeared and disappeared as by the wand of an en- 
chanter, taught from immemorial ages in the ways 
of the woods, finding in every spreading tree a for- 
tress, every tree-trunk a half-human, ever sympa- 
thising friend, using the prodigious fertility of the 
forest as their commissariat, sharpened in every 
sense to an almost superhuman acuteness of sight 
and hearing. The Redmen were near enough to the 
animal kingdom to partake of its finest qualities of 
sense, qualities acquired by thousands of years of 
friction and contact with the all-comprehending 
Mother Nature around, while their inclusion in the 
kingdom of men had, through the same thousands 



In the Tragical Wood 95 

of years, wrought out a wondrous brightness of 
intellect, and intelligence of a kind so self-developed 
and original as to resemble that of elves and goblins, 
swarming out of the bowels of the earth, with un- 
natural knowledge. 

Braddock's mistreatment of these apparently sim- 
ple people, the Iroquois, the most highly gifted of all 
American Indians, — " he treated us like dogs," as 
explained one of their number, — wrought his ruin. 

The reverie of the undying forest was now broken 
by a deathless scene. 

'' I cannot describe the horrors of that scene," 
wrote Lieutenant Leslie of the 44th, three weeks 
later, " no pen could do it. The yell of the Indians 
is fresh on my ear, and the terrific sound will haunt 
me to the hour of my dissolution." 

This yell came from 900 throats, multiplied to 
9000 or perhaps 90,000, by the sinister reverbera- 
tion of the midsummer wildwood, whose gruesome 
recesses acted as sounding-boards, and shot forth a 
hundred variations of the harsh and thunderous 
nymph Echo, whose silent realm had been invaded. 
It seemed, indeed, as if the wrath of the great god 
Pan himself had been roused to fury, and all the 
powers of the raging underworld of myth and fairy 
had suddenly been let loose, to swarm upward in 
invisible wrath and might in defence of their forest 
children. 

The trees turned to pillars of flame; the depths 
of the sombre Alleghanies became livid with smoke. 

A thousand gallant Englishmen and Virginians 



96 George Washington 

lay like stricken deer, pierced with bullets, toma- 
hawked, scalped, in every attitude that writhing 
agony could take, blanched, bloody, lifeless, strewn 
for miles in scarlet horror along the road which had 
been the magnet of their destruction, a road which 
for them had led straight into the jaws of death. 

Only twenty-three out of eighty-six officers 
escaped a scene which, in the energy of its mad 
despair, might beggar the powers of Edgar Allan 
Poe to describe in another '' Masque of the Red 
Death."' Platoon shot down platoon in the blind 
frenzy of panic, and the woods sang with the whirl- 
wind of flying bullets that murdered, indiscrimi- 
nately, friend and foe. Braddock, like Stonewall 
Jackson, was thought by some to have been shot by 
one of his own men. A wild rush backward through 
the fatal woods was made by the three hundred or 
four hundred survivors, while Washington, ill and 
weakened by disease, almost heart-broken in mind, 
lingered long enough to bury the misguided Brad- 
dock in the road, where fugitive feet and flying 
waggons obliterated every trace of the burial-place 
from the sight of the vindictive savages. 

But the craven cowards were pursued by phantom 
fears. No Indian followed. Impelled by resistless 
terror, the remnant fled on and on, the wretched 
Dunbar at their head, and hardly stopped till they 
had reached Philadelphia; while Franklin relates, 
in a most touching passage, how the dying Brad- 
dock praised the brave Virginians almost with his 



In the Tragical Wood 97 

last breath, and expired murmuring : '' The next 
time we shall know how to meet them." 

Ages before, at the very beginning of the Chris- 
tian era, this same most memorable tragedy had 
been enacted on German soil, with Roman soldiers 
and imperial eagles and the grandiose might of the 
City of the Seven Hills behind it, and all the antique 
imperial world as spectators. A grey-haired Caesar, 
whose exquisite lineaments have come down in the 
chiselled beauty of the Young Augustus, stood in 
his Roman palace and, gazing wistfully towards 
Germany, wrung his hands and cried : " O Varus, 
Varus, give me back my legions ! " 

For the legionaries of Rome, advancing incau- 
tiously into the awful solitudes of the Teutoburger 
Forest, in the wildwoods of prehistoric Germany, 
were surrounded and annihilated by Arminius, the 
champion of the wild, young, fresh '' Germany " 
that had grown up, like the valiant Iroquois, almost 
unnoticed in the dense forests of Westphalia, and 
burst down on the Romans with the fury of a whirl- 
wind. 

" O Varus, Varus, give me back my legions ! " 

'' The sea washes away all human ills," sang 
Euripides, pathetically, ages ago, as he remembered 
what it had obliterated for Hellas. 

The Forest is also a Sea beneath which, not the 
navies but the armies of the world have sunk, en- 
tombed — obliterated — forgotten. 

Out of the agony of that time, four letters of 



q8 George Washington 

Washington have reached us, like leaves of that 
fateful wood blown to* us by the feeble breath of 
the dying. They give us the most authentic, first- 
hand story of the " Battle of the Monongahela " 
as he calls it, and deserve quoting in their fulness : 

To Governor Dinwiddie 

" Fort Cumberland, i8 July, 1755. 
*' HoNBL. Sir, 

"As I am favored with an opportunity, I should 
think myself inexcusable was I to omit giving you 
some account of our late Engagement with the French 
on the Monongahela, the 9th instant. 

" We continued our march from Fort Cumberland 
to Frazier's (which is within 7 miles of Duquesne) 
without meeting any extraordinary event, having only 
a straggler or two picked up by the French Indians. 
When we came to this place, we were attacked (very 
unexpectedly) by about three hundred French and 
Indians. Our numbers consisted of about Thirteen 
hundred well armed men, chiefly Regulars, who were 
immediately struck with such an inconceivable panick, 
that nothing but confusion and disobedience of orders 
prevailed among them. The officers, in general, be- 
haved with incomparable bravery, for which they 
greatly suffered, there being near 60 killed and 
wounded — a large proportion, out of the number we 
had! 

" The Virginia companies behaved like men and 
died like soldiers ; for I believe out of three companies 
that were on the ground that day scarce thirty were 
left alive. Capt. Peyroney and all his officers, down 
to a corporal, were killed; Captn. Poison had almost 



In the Tragical Wood 99 

as hard a fate, for only one of his escaped. In short, 
the dastardly behaviour of the Regular troops (so- 
called) exposed those who were inclined to do their 
duty to almost certain death ; and, at length, in despite 
of every effort to the contrary, broke and ran as sheep 
before hounds, leaving the artillery, ammunition, pro- 
visions, baggage, and, in short, everything a prey to 
the enemy. And when we endeavoured to rally them, 
in hopes of regaining the ground and what we had 
left upon it, it was with as little success as if we had 
attempted to have stopped the wild bears of the moun- 
tains, or rivulets with our feet; for they would break 
by, in despite of every effort that could be made to 
prevent it. 

'' The General was wounded in the shoulder and 
breast, of which he died three days after ; his two 
aids-de-camp were both wounded, but are in a fair 
way of recovery ; Colo. Burton and Sir John St. Clair 
are also wounded, and I hope will get over it ; Sir 
Peter Halket, with many other brave officers, were 
killed in the field. It is supposed, that we had three 
hundred or more killed ; about that number we brought 
off wounded, and it is conjectured (I believe with 
much truth) that two thirds of both received their 
shot from our own cowardly Regulars, who gathered 
themselves into a body, contrary to orders, ten or 
twelve deep, would then level, fire and shoot down 
the men before them. 

" I tremble at the consequences that this defeat may 
have upon our back settlers, who, I suppose, will all 
leave their habitations unless there are proper meas- 
ures taken for their security. 

** Colo. Dunbar, who commands at present, intends, 



lOO George Washing-ton 

as soon as his men are recruited at this place, to con- 
tinue his march to Philadelphia for winter quarters: 
consequently there will be no men left here, unless it 
is the shattered remains of the Virginia troops, who 
are totally inadequate to the protection of the fron- 
tiers." ^ 

"To John A. Washington 

" Fort Cumberland, i8 July, 1755. 
" Dear Brother, 

'' As I have heard, since my arrival at this place^ a 
circumstantial account of my death and dying speech, 
I take this early opportunity of contradicting the first, 
and of assuring you, that I have not as yet composed 
the latter. But, by the all-powerful dispensations of 
Providence, I have been protected beyond all human 
probability and expectation ; for I had four bullets 
through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet 
escaped unhurt, altho' death was levelling my com- 
panions on every side of me! 

" We have been most scandalously beaten by a 
trifling body of men, but fatigue and want of time 
will prevent me from giving you any of the details, 
until I have the happiness of seeing you at Mount 
Vernon, which I now most ardently wish for, since 
we are drove in thus far. A weak and feeble state of 
health obliges me to halt here for two or three days, 
to recover a little strength, that I may thereby be 
enabled to proceed homewards with more ease. You 
may expect to see me there on Saturday or Sun- 
day se'-night, which is as soon as I can well be down, 
as I shall take my Bullskin Plantations in my way. 

' * Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 173 



In the Tragical Wood loi 

Pray give my compliments to all my friends. I am, 
dear Jack, your most affectionate brother." 

" To Robert Jackson 

" Mount Vernon, 2 August, 1755. 
" Dear Sir, 

" I must acknowledge you had great reason to be 
terrified with the first accounts, that were given of 
our unhappy defeat ; and, I must own, I was not a 
little surprised to find, that Governor Innes was the 
means of alarming the country with a report so ex- 
traordinary, without having better confirmation of the 
truth, than the story of an affrighted wagoner! 

" It is true, we have been beaten, shamefully beaten, 
by a handful of men, who only intended to molest and 
disturb our march. Victory was their smallest expec- 
tation. But see the wondrous works of Providence, 
the uncertainty of human things ! We, but a few mo- 
ments before, believed our numbers almost equal to 
the Canadian force ; they, only expected to annoy us. 
Yet, contrary to all expectation and human probabil- 
ity, and even to the common course of things, we were 
totally defeated, sustained the loss of every thing, 
which they have got, are enriched by it, and accommo- 
dated by them. This, as you observe, must be an 
affecting story to the colony, and will, no doubt, license 
the tongues of people to censure those, whom they 
think most blamable ; which, by the by, often falls 
very wrongfully. I join very heartily with you in 
believing, that when this story comes to be related in 
future annals, it will meet with unbelief and indigna- 
tion, for had I not been witness to the fact on that 
fatal day, I should scarce have given credit to it even 
now. 



I02 George Washing-ton 

" Whenever it suits you to come into Fairfax, I 
hope you will make your home at Mount Vernon. 
Please to give my compliments to all inquiring friends. 
I assure you, nothing could have added more to the 
satisfaction of my safe return, than hearing of the 
friendly concern that has been expressed on my sup- 
posed death. I am, etc." 




GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM. 
From the painting by H. I. Thompson, in the State House, Hartford, Conn. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WIDOW CUSTIS 

" She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd ; 
And I loved her, that she did pity them. 
This only is the witchcraft I have used; 
Here comes the lady, let her witness it." 

Othello. 

NEVER had History indeed rung down the cur- 
tain on a more dismal tragedy, yet no histo- 
rian has failed to plant a requiem willow over the 
grave of the unfortunate Braddock. For a moment 
he appears jauntily on the edge of the Eastern 
horizon, in January, 1755, leaps lightly over the 
peccant Atlantic, as if scorning to touch it with 
loitering feet, gathers a brief and brilliant haze of 
glory about himself in garrulous Virginia, as he 
boastfully plans his campaign, stalks up and down 
the narrow colonial stage like a scarlet flamingo, 
then starts into the inexorable woods, never to 
return. Oblivion, the tireless swallower of mush- 
room reputations, has tried in vain to swallow his; 
it sticks in the throat of Time, a gigantic morsel of 
folly that cannot be swallowed. 

In this prelude to his life's work, Washington 
suffered a second shock of humiliation, which was 
to clothe his nerves in steel against all possible 
disaster, and invest him, as the " spirit-protected 

10.^ 



I04 George Washing-ton 

man," in a breastplate which no after-misfortune 
could penetrate. 

Franklin sagaciously remarked, that Braddock's 
defeat dealt a deadly blow at the reputations of the 
British regulars for invincible prowess, and opened 
the eyes of the Americans to the weakness of the 
contention that they zvere invincible. 

The spot where Siegfried was vulnerable had 
been discovered ! 

Meanwhile, Washington had strong and appre- 
ciative friends among the burgesses, who soon un- 
derstood the situation, and secured for him the ap- 
pointment of colonel of the sixteen new companies 
to be raised, together with a grant of £40,000 for 
their maintenance, and a purse of remuneration for 
each officer and private in the late unfortunate ex- 
pedition. He himself received £300. Recruiting 
offices were opened at Fredericksburg, Alexandria, 
and Winchester, and the momentary stupor and 
amazement of the colony began to clear away. 

It would be a matter of almost infinite, yet triv- 
ial and distressing, detail, to follow Washington 
in his voluminous correspondence with Governor 
Dinwiddie, Speaker Robinson, and Lord Loudon 
during the next two or three years. The endless 
small vexations of frontier life — drunkenness of 
officers, desertions of troops, insufficiency of pay 
and of ammunition, passionate appeals to the Gov- 
ernor and burgesses for help, for redress of griev- 
ances, for even bread and meat and powder — fill 
these letters, which are written with a sustained 



The Widow Custis 105 

clearness, cogency, and vigour, that reflect high 
credit on Washington as a master of direct and 
simple English. At this time, he had no secretary: 
all these letters are presumably autographic, and 
all show a circumstantial mastery of every detail of 
the service. He was, truly, fast becoming profi- 
cient in that forest - and - frontier university, in 
which other great Americans were to rival or to 
follow him — General Israel Putnam, Sir William 
Johnson, General Sam Houston, Lewis, Clark, 
Daniel Morgan, and a hundred frontier-bred heroes 
of the border " in the brave old days of '76." These 
letters read with a fluency and power, in which the 
heart-throbs of the young commander — now twenty- 
four — are still distinguishable. 

In May, 1756, war was formally declared against 
France, whose people Washington, in one of these 
letters — for once casting off his habitual reserve 
— denounces as " barbarians." Their barbarous 
scalping-parties turned the beautiful Vale of the 
Shenandoah, the upper reaches of the Potomac, the 
luxuriant mountains of western Pennsylvania, and 
the fern- and laurel-clad gorges of the Alleghanies 
into a pandemonium of blood, starvation, and 
murder. One decisive blow struck at Fort Du- 
quesne, now nearly deserted, in consequence of the 
withdrawal of its garrison for the defence of Fort 
Niagara and Crown Point, would have brought 
the frightful turmoil to an end. But a civilian 
agent of the Crown — one Atkin — had been put 
over Washington's head. Lord Loudon preferred 



io6 George Washing-ton 

to direct operations against the Indians from Phil- 
adelphia and New York, and things in Virginia 
were left abundantly to themselves. 

The paper on which Washington writes fairly 
burns with his supplications, prayers, entreaties, 
almost tears, to Dinwiddle for help, for substantial 
recognition of the services of the colonial militia, 
for the '' tools " to erect the chain of forts, now 
contemplated, along a frontier three hundred and 
fifty miles in length, almost daily punctuated with 
funeral pyres, murdering parties, conflagrations, 
pillaging, cruelties and tortures of every description. 

Even at this early period, Washington's abhor- 
rence of the common military vices of profanity and 
gambling crops out in letters like the following : 

'* This extract from his Orderly Book, issued in 
general orders by the Commander two days after he 
reached Fort Cumberland, will show that he enforced 
rigid rules of discipline : — 

" Col. Washington has observed, that the men of 
his regiment are very profane and reprobate. He 
takes this opportunity of informing them of his great 
displeasure at such practices, and assures them, if 
they do not leave them off, they shall be severely pun- 
ished. The officers are desired, if they hear any man 
swear, or make use of an oath or execration, to order 
the offender twenty-five lashes immediately, without 
a court-martial. For the second offence, they will be 
more severely punished." ^ 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 296, note. 



The Widow Custis 107 

** To THE Speaker of the House of Burgesses 

" December, 1756. 
" Dear Sir, 

" It gave me infinite concern to hear by several let- 
ters, that the Assembly are incensed against the Vir- 
ginia Regiment ; and think they have cause to accuse 
the officers of all inordinate vices ; but more espe- 
cially of drunkenness and profanity ! How far any 
one individual may have subjected himself to such re- 
flections, I will not pretend to determine, but this I 
am certain of ; and can with the highest safety call my 
conscience, my God! and (what I suppose will still 
be a more demonstrable proof, at least in the eye of 
the World) the Orders and Instructions which I have 
given, to evince the purity of my own intentions and 
to show on the one hand, that my incessant endeav- 
ours have been directed to discountenance Gaming, 
drinking, swearing, and other vices, with which all 
camps too much abound : while on the other, I have 
used every expedient to inspire a laudable emulation 
in the officers, and an unerring exercise of Duty in 
the Soldiers. How far I may have mistaken the 
means to attain so salutary an end behooves not me 
to determine: But this I presume to say, that a man's 
intentions should be allowed in some respects to plead 
for his actions. I have been more explicit Sir, on 
this head than I otherwise shou'd, because I find that 
my own character must of necessity be involved in 
the general censure, for which reason I can not help 
observing, that if the country think they have cause 
to condemn my conduct, and have a person in view 
that will act; that he may do. But who will endeav- 
our to act more for her Interests than I have done? 



io8 Georg-e Washing-ton 

It will give me the greatest pleasure to resign a com- 
mand which I solemnly declare I accepted against my 
will." 1 

Out of the passion and terror of this broken time 
the following letter glows with a sullen fire : 

" To Governor Dinwiddie 

'' Winchester, 22 April, 1756. 
" HoNBLE. Sir, 

" This encloses several letters, and the minutes of 
a council of war, which was held upon the receipt of 
them. Your Honour may see to what unhappy straits 
the distressed inhabitants as well as I, am reduced. 
I am too little acquainted. Sir, with pathetic language, 
to attempt a description of the people's distresses, 
though I have a generous soul, sensible of wrongs, 
and swelling for redress. But what can I do? If 
bleeding, dying! would glut their insatiate revenge, 
I would be a willing offering to savage fury, and die 
by inches to save a people ! I see their situation, know 
their danger, and participate their sufferings, without 
having it in my power to give them further relief, 
than uncertain promises. In short, I see inevitable 
destruction in so clear a light, that, unless vigorous 
measures are taken by the Assembly, and speedy as- 
sistance sent from below, the poor inhabitants that 
are now in forts, must unavoidably fall, while the 
remainder of the country are flying before the barba- 
rous foe. In fine, the melancholy situation of the 
people, the little prospect of assistance, the gross and 
scandalous abuses cast upon the officers in general, 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, pp. 406-407. 



The Widow Custis 109 

which is reflecting upon me in particular, for suffer- 
ing misconducts of such extraordinary kinds, and the 
distant prospects, if any, that I can see, of gaining 
honor and reputation in the service, are motives which 
cause me to lament the hour, that gave me a com- 
mission, and would induce me, at any other time than 
this of imminent danger, to resign without one hesi- 
tating moment, a command, which I never expect to 
reap either honor or benefit from ; but, on the con- 
trary, have almost an absolute certainty of incurring 
displeasure below, while the murder of poor innocent 
babes and helpless families may be laid to my account 
here! 

" The supplicating tears of the women, and moving 
petitions from the men, melt me into such deadly 
sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know my own 
mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the 
butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to 
the people's ease." ^ 

'' The melancholy condition of our distressed 
frontier," is the burden of these mid-century letters, 
when Virginia on the w^est was girdled with fire, 
" the woods alive with Indians " writes the Colonel, 
'' prowling like wolves " ; '' Indians alone are a 
match for Indians " ; 500 of them enlisted by the 
Americans would be equal to 5000 regulars. The 
devilish atrocities of the hour forced the Virginia 
Assembly to offer from fifteen to thirty pounds for 
each tawny scalp sent in to a frontier camp. 

Human foxes, squirrels, panthers, these wood- 
land creatures, to parallel whom, one is thrown upon 

^ ^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 248. 



iio Georg-e Washing-ton 

the antique myth-world of Greece, had been sharp- 
ened by immemorial familiarity with the woods into 
almost superhuman intelligence, endowed with the 
profoundest knowledge of woodcraft, dusky Mer- 
curys of the forest with winged feet, web-footed 
when it came to crossing water, protectively coloured 
among the indistinguishable shades of glade and 
gorge, the crowning presence in a vast sylvan re- 
gion, boundless as the continent itself, in which they 
seemed to occupy the apex of a fantastic animal 
and vegetable world, and to rule over it supremely, 
by reason both of first possession and instinctive 
cunning. 

Fanciful as Undine, in the way in which they 
appeared and disappeared in the ocean of leaves, 
their combinations and dissolutions, alliances and 
disintegrations, dependent upon a changeful world 
of symbolisms, in which belts of wampum and 
calumets of peace, scalps and hatchets played a 
strange and solemn part, were hardly more binding 
than alliances of wasps, or clouds of birds, as they 
appear to us in the comedies of Aristophanes; and 
yet, so formidable were they even in their momen- 
tary harmonies, that the literature of early America 
is fairly resonant with their presence, and the white 
man was forced to confess that, here in the new 
world, he had come upon a new species, self -devel- 
oped, self-poised, owing little to the white man, bor- 
rowing less from him except his vices, armies of 
" brownies " who rose from their subterranean re- 
cesses without warning, inflicted a deadly blow, and 



The Widow Custis 1 1 1 

then melted like the mist into the dark and danger- 
ous mountains. 

Washington clearly understood the nature of 
these antagonists, and his letters are full of refer- 
ences to their wily and treacherous ways. 

The Indians on their side faithfully appreciated 
his insight, by dubbing him in their tongue, '' Cono- 
tocarius," a " Destroyer of Cities," a name which 
had been given in earlier times to his ancestor, 
Colonel John Washington of the Northern Neck. 

" Washington," writes Colonel Fairfax at this 
time, " is the toast of every table " ; and Dinwiddie, 
corresponding with General Abercrombie in Eng- 
land, went into particulars : 

" As we are told the Earl of Loudon is to raise 
three regiments on this continent, on the British es- 
tablishment, I dearn't venture to trouble him imme- 
diately on his arrival with any recommendations; but, 
good Sir, give me leave to pray your interest with 
his Lordship in favor of Colonel George Washington, 
who, I will venture to say, is a very deserving gentle- 
man, and has from the beginning commanded the 
forces of this dominion. General Braddock had so 
high an esteem for his merit, that he made him one 
of his aid-de-camps, and, if he had survived, I believe 
he would have provided handsomely for him in the 
regulars. He is a person much beloved here, and he 
has gone through many hardships in the service, and 
I really think he has great merit, and believe he can 
raise more men here, than any one present that I 
know. If his Lordship will be so kind as to promote 



1 1 2 George Washington 

him in the British establishment, I think he will 
answer my recommendation." ^ 

About the same time, Dinwiddie sent an interest- 
ing census of Virginia to the London Board of 
Trade, in which he stated that the population was 
about 300,000, including 120,000 blacks. Of this 
number, 35,000 were subject to militia duty, or a 
payment of ten pounds exemption tax; and yet so 
great was the dearth of men, or the antagonism to 
frontier service, that the one cry of Washington's 
letters now, piercing through his other cries for 
meat, money, bread, powder, is '' men," " men," 
" men." 

In January, 1758, to the relief of all apparently, 
Dinwiddie departed for London, pursued by the fol- 
lowing benediction of Speaker Robinson in a private 
letter to Washington : 

"We have not yet heard who is to succeed him [Din- 
widdie]. God grant it may be somebody better ac- 
quainted with the unhappy business we have in hand, 
and who, by his conduct and counsel, may dispel the 
cloud now hanging over this distressed country. Till 
that event, I beg, my dear friend, that you will bear, 
so far as a man of honor ought, the discouragements 
and slights you have too often met with, and continue 
to serve your country, as I am convinced you have 
always hitherto done, in the best manner you can with 
the small assistance afforded you." ^ 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 284, note. 
^ Ibid., p. 510, note. 



The Widow Custis 113 

Two years and a half had now passed since that 
mournful midsummer of 1755, when Braddock, 
with his 1300 noble fellows, had started for that 
'' hole of barbarians," Fort Duquesne, as Washing- 
ton called it, and, in the funereal wood, still lay, 
doubtless, relics of the 1000 carcases barbarously 
left there, after Washington had personally read 
the majestic burial service of the Book of Common 
Prayer over his dead chief; and still things wagged 
on in that endless, beguiling, inconsequent, colonial 
way, which never seemed to bring anything to an 
end, never ended in real peace or real war, a skir- 
mishing, scared, witless, toothless time, without 
teeth or talons to clutch any policy, hot or cold, 
absolutely inane in its linked listlessness and futility 
long drawn out. 

Washington, endowed originally with a splendid 
constitution, inured to hardships by innumerable 
fatigues and privations, nerve-proof against criti- 
cism, insinuation, even the scribbling fluency of 
Dinwiddie, — at last unnerved, Washington fell dan- 
gerously ill of dysentery and camp-fever, the seeds 
of which had sullenly lurked in his system since he 
had been borne in a litte-r, just before Braddock's 
defeat. 

For four months he hung between life and death 
at Mount Vernon, whither he had gone for con- 
valescence; and here, or not far from here, in a 
little while, he was to experience one of those great 
changes in fortune which come to men of his class 
and character only once in a lifetime. 



114 George Washington 

All of a sudden out of the gloom and anguish of 
these perturbed times, without previous warning, 
falls the following note, as delicately thrilling in its 
way as one of those musical notes that flow spon- 
taneously from the throat of Spring: 

"To Mrs. Martha Custis 

" July 20, 1758. 
" We have begun our march for the Ohio. A 
courier is starting for Williamsburg, and I embrace 
the opportunity to send a few words to one whose 
life is now inseparable from mine. Since that happy 
hour when we made our pledges to each other, my 
thoughts have been continually going to you as 
another Self. That an all-powerful Providence may 
keep us both in safety is the prayer of your ever faith- 
ful and affectionate friend." ^ 

The strong, controlled passion of a soul which 
strove in vain to spend itself on men and affairs, 
now, at twenty-six, turned its ardour towards a 
lovely woman who was, like the gallant colonel him- 
self, a " consummate flower " of the Virginia 
planter commonwealth. One cannot imagine this 
stately young warrior selecting for himself, out of 
that wealth of jewelled women around him, one ra- 
diantly beautiful, or markedly intellectual, or pun- 
gent, airy, witty — a Ninon, a Lady Mary, or a De 
Stael — but simply a lovely, Virginia woman of the 
eighteenth century, rich in the possession of all the 
homelike and housewifely charms, rich in the heart 

* Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol, ii, p. 53. 



The Widow Custis 115 

and soul, rather than in the intellect and understand- 
ing, an ideal of the gentler womanhood that pre- 
ceded the era of the Amazon, and consecrated itself 
altogether to the sacred offices of friendship. 

Of such was Martha Dandridge. 

She was a perfect (or, if you will, an imperfect) 
type of that matronly Virginian woman, of whom 
suggestive images hung in every ripening fruit- 
orchard of the commonwealth ; there was no savour 
of the nymph or the milkmaid, of the Lady Godiva, 
or of the impassioned Chimene species about her. 
She had grown up in that old Virginia, gracious, 
charming, high-spirited, without the '' grand air " of 
the Evelyn Byrds, or the ladies that cast ineffable 
glances from the canvases of Lely or Sir Godfrey, 
yet mistress of far more than merely this : faithful 
to the daily task, tenacious as De Sevigne to a 
friendship once formed, it is perhaps fortunate that 
she, of all the scribbling women then living, scrib- 
bled least of what lay on her breast, and has floated 
on down to us a benign presence, a perfume, a per- 
fect memory, rather than an impassioned Heloise, 
over whom generations have wept. Just the wife 
for Washington, one cannot help thinking, for the 
strenuous young man of action, the hero absorbed 
by a thousand struggles, the dreamer of a thousand 
dreams for King and commonwealth, the incarna- 
tion of an energy that soon realised itself on a hun- 
dred fields, yet needed nothing so much as a beloved 
companion of his heart to share his glories and his 



ii6 George Washington 

dangers, his secret thoughts and his most sacred 
confidences. 

The union of George and Martha Washington 
was, indeed, like that marriage of perfect words to 
noble music, so melodiously sung by the laureate of 
a later generation. 

She was a sweet, sane, whole-souled, wholesome 
Virginia lady, skilled in the gracious household 
accomplishments of the time, fond of all the inno- 
cent gaieties and amusements fashionable in the 
eighteenth century, yet a slave to none, wise in the 
counsels of the household, conscious of her lofty 
position, yet never presuming upon it, an early riser, 
an indefatigable tricoteuse when the needs of the 
Revolutionary soldiers became known, no saint or 
St. Cecilia of the harpsichord, but a simple, loving, 
high-bred, faithful woman, who in her span of 
seventy-one years lived to be twice a widow. She 
was from May to February older than Washington, 
while Colonel Daniel Parke Custis, her first hus- 
band, was twenty years older than herself. Four 
children — Martha, Daniel, John Parke, and a girl 
dying in infancy — were the fruit of the Custis union, 
while, in an oft quoted epigram, " Providence denied 
Washington children that he might be the father of 
the whole country." 

This distant corner of the English dominions 
then suffered a dearth of teachers for women, yet 
Virginia was at this very time full of the women 
who became mothers of the famous statesmen, 
publicists, judges, generals, and governors of the 



The Widow Custis 117 

commonwealth during the Revolution, women 
whose potential genius was as great as that of 
the women of Greece, in the age that preceded the 
golden cycle of Pericles. 

Ten years lay between Martha Dandridge's two 
marriages : at seventeen she had become the bride 
of Daniel Parke Custis, who was thirty-seven; at 
twenty-six when she had been but a few months a 
widow, George Washington claimed her as his 
bride. 

Her grandson, two generations later, wrote the 
following pretty story of the courtship: 

"It was in 1758, that an officer, attired in a mili- 
tary undress, and attended by a body-servant, tall 
and militaire as his chief, crossed the ferry called Wil- 
liams's, over the Pamunkey, a branch of the York 
River. On the boat touching the southern or New 
Kent side, the soldier's progress was arrested by one 
of those personages, who give the beau ideal of the 
Virginia gentleman of the old regime, the very soul 
of kindness and hospitality. It was in vain the sol- 
dier urged his business at Williamsburg, important 
communications to the Governor, etc. Mr. Chamber- 
layne, on whose domain the militaire had just landed, 
would hear of no excuse. Colonel Washington (for 
the soldier was he) was a name and character so 
dear to all the Virginians, that his passing by one of 
the old castles of the commonwealth, without calling 
and partaking of the hospitalities of the host, was en- 
tirely out of the question. The colonel, however, did 
not surrender at discretion, but stoutly maintained 
his ground, till Chamberlayne bringing up his reserve, 



1 1 8 Georg-e Washington 

in the intimation that he would introduce his friend 
to a young and charming widow, then beneath his 
roof, the soldier capitulated, on condition that he 
should dine, ' only dine,' and then, by pressing his 
charger and borrowing of the night, he would reach 
Williamsburg before his excellency could shake off 
his morning slumbers. Orders were accordingly is- 
sued to Bishop, the Colonel's body-servant and faith- 
ful follower, who, together with the fine English 
charger, had been bequeathed by the dying Braddock 
to Major Washington, on the famed and fatal field 
of the Monongahela. Bishop, bred in the school of 
European discipline, raised his hand to his cap, as 
much as to say, ' Your honour's orders shall be 
obeyed.' 

'' The Colonel now proceeded to the mansion, and 
was introduced to various guests (for when was a 
Virginian domicile of the olden time without guests?), 
and above all, to the charming widow. Tradition re- 
lates that they were mutually pleased on this their first 
interview, nor is it remarkable; they were of an age 
when impressions are strongest. The lady was fair 
to behold, of fascinating manners, and splendidly en- 
dowed with wordly benefits. The hero, fresh from his 
early fields, redolent of fame, and with a form on 
which ' every god did seem to set his seal, to give the 
world assurance of a man.' 

'' The morning passed pleasantly away. Evening 
came, with Bishop, true to his orders and firm at his 
post, holding his favorite charger with one hand, while 
the other was waiting to offer the ready stirrup. The 
sun sank in the horizon, and yet the Colonel appeared 
not. And then the old soldier marvelled at his chief's 



The Widow Custis iig 

delay. ' Twas strange, 'twas passing strange ' — 
surely he was not wont to be a single moment behind 
his appointments, for he was the most punctual of all 
men. Meantime, the host enjoyed the scene of the 
veteran on duty at the gate, while the Colonel was so 
agreeably employed in the parlor; and proclaiming 
that no guest ever left his house after sunset, his mili- 
tary visitor was, without much difficulty, persuaded 
to order Bishop to put up the horses for the night. 
The sun rode high in the heavens the ensuing day, 
when the enamored soldier pressed with his spur his 
charger's side, and speeded on his way to the seat 
of government, where, having despatched his public 
business, he retraced his steps, and, at the White 
House, the engagement took place, with preparations 
for the marriage. 

'' And much hath the biographer heard of that mar- 
riage, from gray-haired domestics, who waited at the 
board where love made the feast and Washington was 
the guest. And rare and high was the revelry, at that 
palmy period of Virginia's festal age ; for many were 
gathered to that marriage, of the good, the great, the 
gifted, and the gay, while Virginia, with joyous ac- 
clamation hailed in her youthful hero a prosperous 
and happy bridegroom. 

" ' And so you remember when Colonel Washing- 
ton came a-courting of your mistress? ' said the biog- 
rapher to old Cully, in his hundreth year. * Ay, 
master, that / do,' replied this ancient family servant, 
who had lived to see five generations ; * great times, 
sir, great times ! Shall never see the like again ! ' — 
* And Washington looked something like a man, a 
proper man; hey, Cully?' — 'Never see'd the like, sir; 



120 George Washing-ton 

never the likes of him, tho' I have seen many in my 
day ; so tall, so straight ! and then he sat a horse and 
rode with such an air ! Ah, sir ; he was Hke no one 
else! Many of the grandest gentlemen, in their gold 
lace, were at the wedding, but none looked like the 
man himself ! ' Strong, indeed, must have been the 
impressions which the person and manner of Wash- 
ington made upon the rude, ' untutored mind ' of this 
poor negro, since the lapse of three quarters of a 
century had not sufficed to efface them." ^ 

This poetic ceremony took place, in all probability, 
at old St. Peter's Church, near the " White House," 
residence of Mrs. Custis^ — possibly at the fine old 
colonial house itself (accounts vary). 

A little more than a century later, another noble 
Federal soldier, commander of a mighty host then 
slowly enveloping Richmond, knelt at the altar of 
this venerable old forest church, and prayed most 
fervently that he, like Washington a hundred years 
before, might become the saviour of his distracted 
country ! ^ 

It was a curious coincidence that the surrender 
of Fort Duquesne and of the fair and charming 
widow took place almost simultaneously. 

Of her personal characteristics her grandson 
writes : 

" In person, Mrs. Washington was well-formed, 
and somewhat below the middle size. To judge from 

* G. W. P. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of 
Washington, p. 501. 

'Gen. G. B. McClellan, Diary. 



The Widow Custis 121 

her portrait at Arlington House, painted by Wool- 
aston, in 1757, when she was in the bloom of life, she 
must at that period have been eminently handsome. 
In her dress^ though plain, she was so scrupulously 
neat, that ladies have often wondered how Mrs. Wash- 
ington could wear a gown for a week, go through her 
kitchen and laundries, and all the varieties of places 
in the routine of domestic management, and yet the 
gown retained its snow-Hke whiteness, unsullied by 
even a single speck." ^ 

" Mrs. Washington was an uncommon early riser, 
leaving her pillow at day-dawn at all seasons of the 
year, and becoming at once actively engaged in her 
household duties. After breakfast she retired for an 
hour to her chamber, which hour was spent in prayer 
and reading the Holy Scriptures, a practice that she 
never omitted during half a century of her varied 
Hfe." 2 

" Mrs. Carrington, wife of Colonel Edward Car- 
rington, who, with her husband, visited the family at 
Mount Vernon a little while before General Wash- 
ington's death, wrote to her sister as follows, concern- 
ing Mrs. Washington: 

' Let us repair to the old lady's room, which is pre- 
cisely in the style of our good old aunt's — that is to 
say, nicely fixed for all sorts of work. On one side 
sits the chambermaid, with her knitting ; on the other, 
a little colored pet, learning to sew. An old decent 
woman is there, with her table and shears, cutting 
out the negroes' winter clothes, while the good old 

^G. W. P. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of 
Washington, p. 514. 



122 Georg-e Washing-ton 

lady directs them all, incessantly knitting herself. She 
points out to me several pair of nice colored stockings 
and gloves she had just finished, and presents me 
with a pair half done, which she begs I will finish 
and wear for her sake.' 

'' Such is the picture of the wealthy and honored 
wife of Washington, in the privacy of her home. 
What an example of industry and economy for the 
wives and daughters of America ! Mrs. Washington 
always spoke of the days of her public life at New 
York and Philadelphia, as her * lost days.' " ^ 

We may well wind up this chapter with the views, 
in brief, of her two most recent biographers : 

*' Very little is really known of his wife, beyond 
the facts that she was petite, over-fond, hot-tempered, 
obstinate, and a poor speller. In 1778, she was de- 
scribed as ' a sociable, pretty kind of woman,' and she 
seems to have been but little more. One who knew 
her well described her as ' not possessing much sense, 
though a perfect lady and remarkably well calculated 
for her position/ and confirmatory of this is the 
opinion of an English traveller that * there was noth- 
ing remarkable in the person of the lady of the Pres- 
ident; she was matronly and kind, with perfect good 
breeding.' None the less she satisfied Washington ; 
even after the proverbial six months were over he re- 
fused to wander from Mount Vernon, writing that * I 
am now, I believe, fixed at this seat with an agreeable 
Consort for life,' and in 1783 he spoke of her as the 
* partner of all my Domestic enjoyments.' 

^ Bishop Meade's Old Churches and Families of Virginia, 
vol. i, p. g8. 



The Widow Custis 123 

'' John Adams, in one of his recurrent moods of 
bitterness and jealousy towards Washington, de- 
manded, ' Would Washington have ever been com- 
mander of the revolutionary army or president of the 
United States if he had not married the rich widow 
of Mr. Custis ? ' To ask such a question is to over- 
look the fact that Washington's colonial military fame 
was entirely achieved before his marriage." ^ 

'' To the charm of youth and beauty were added 
that touch of quiet sweetness and that winning grace 
of self-possession which come to a woman wived in 
her girlhood, and widowed before age or care has 
checked the first full tide of life. At seventeen she 
had married Daniel Parke Custis, a man more than 
twenty years her senior; but eight years of quiet love 
and duty as wife and mother had only made her youth 
the more gracious in that rural land of leisure and 
good neighbourhood ; and a year's widowhood had 
been but a suitable preparation for perceiving the 
charm of this stately young soldier who now came 
riding her way upon the public business. His age 
was her own ; all the land knew him and loved him 
for gallantry and brave capacity ; he carried himself 
like a prince — and he forgot his errand to linger in 
her company." ^ 

'' But when at last he was free again, there was no 
reason why Washington should wait longer to be 
happy, and he was married to Martha Custis on the 
6th of January, 1759. The sun shone very bright 
that day, and there was the fine glitter of gold, the 

^ Paul Leicester Ford, The True George Washington, p. 93. 
^ Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, p. 99. 



124 George Washington 

brave show of resplendent uniforms, in the Httle 
church where the marriage was solemnized. Officers 
of His Majesty's service crowded there, in their gold 
lace and scarlet coats, to see their comrade wedded ; 
the new Governor, Francis Fauquier, himself came, 
clad as befitted his rank ; and the bridegroom took 
the sun not less gallantly than the rest, as he rode, in 
blue and silver and scarlet, beside the coach and six 
that bore his bride homeward amidst the thronging 
friends of the countryside. The young soldier's love 
of a gallant array and a becoming ceremony was satis- 
fied to the full, and he must have rejoiced to be so 
brave a horseman on such a day. For three months 
of deep content he lived with his bride at her own 
residence, the White House, by York Riverside, 
where their troth had been plighted, forgetting the 
fatigues of the frontier, and learning gratefully the 
new life of quiet love and homely duty. 

'' These peaceful, healing months gone by, he turned 
once more to public business. Six months before his 
marriage he had been chosen a member of the House 
of Burgesses for Frederick County — the county 
which had been his scene of adventure in the old days 
of surveying in the wilderness, and in which ever 
since Braddock's fatal rout he had maintained his 
headquarters striving to keep the border against the 
savages." ^ 

Of the passages here quoted, let the reader select 
for himself the one best suited to his conception of 
Lady Washington, as she comes down to us on the 
white wings of unsullied tradition. 

^ Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, p. 102. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ARCADY 

IN 1756-60, an English archdeacon was travelHng 
through Virginia on horseback, and in the 
course of his travels he comes to Mount Vernon, 
which he thus describes : 

*' From Colchester we went about twelve miles far- 
ther to Mount Vernon. This place is the property of 
Colonel Washington, and truly deserving of its owner. 
The house is most beautifully situated upon a high 
hill on the banks of the Potomac; and commands a 
noble prospect of water, of cliffs, of woods, and planta- 
tion. The river is nearly two miles broad, though two 
hundred from the mouth; and divides the dominions 
of Virginia from Maryland. We rested here one day, 
and proceeded up the river about twenty-six miles, to 
take a view of the Great Falls." ^ 

It was to this '' beautifully situated " place that 
the young colonel took his bride, in the spring of 
1759, after a happy honeymoon of three months 
spent at the '' White House," part of the ancestral 
acres of the Dandridges. Of these acres, 15,000 
belonged to the Custis estate, and came, with the 
fair widow's £45,000 in stocks, bonds, and money, 
under the care and charge of her energetic husband. 

* A. Burnaby, Travels Through North America, p. 67. 
125 



126 Georg-e Washington 

How energetic this young man was, and how lynx- 
eyed in his circumstantial consideration of all '' the 
ins and outs, ups and downs " of the connubial 
state, may be gathered from his first letter to his 
London agents, Robert Gary & Co., Merchants, 
London, and from the significant invoice that 
follows : 

" To Robert Gary and Gompany, Merchants, 
London 

" Williamsburg, i May, 1759. 
'' Gentln., 

" The inclosed is the minister's certificate of my 
marriage with Mrs. Martha Gustis, properly, as I am 
told, authenticated. You will, therefore, for the future 
please to address all your letters, which relate to the 
affairs of the late Daniel Parke Gustis, Esqr., to me, 
as by marriage I am entitled to a third part of that 
estate, and invested likewise with the care of the other 
two thirds by a decree of our General Gourt, which I 
obtained in order to strengthen the power I before had 
in consequence of my wife's administration. 

" I have many letters of yours in my possession 
unanswered; but at present this serves only to advise 
you of the above change, and at the same time to ac- 
quaint you, that I shall continue to make you the same 
consignments of tobacco as usual, and will endeavor 
to increase it in proportion as I find myself and the 
estate benefited thereby. 

" The scarcity of the last year's crop, and the high 
prices of tobacco, consequent thereupon, would, in any 
other case, have induced me to sell the estate's crop 
(which indeed is only 16 hhd.) in the country; but. 



Arcady 127 

for a present, and I hope small advantage only, I did 
not care to break the chain of correspondence, that 
has so long subsisted, and therefore have, according 
to your desire, given Captn. Talman, an offer of the 
whole. 

'* On the other side is an invoice of some goods, 
which I beg of you to send me by the first ship, bound 
either to Potomack or Rappahannock, as I am in im- 
mediate want of them. Let them be insured, and, in 
case of accident re-shipped without delay. Direct for 
me at Mount Vernon, Potomack River, Virginia ; the 
former is the name of my seat, the other of the river 
on which 'tis situated. I am, etc. 

"May, 1759. 

" Invoice of Sundry Goods to be Ship'd by Robt. 
Gary, Esq., and Gompany for the use of George Wash- 
ington — viz : 

*' I Tester Bedstead 7}4 feet pitch with fashionable 
bleu or blue and white curtains to suit a Room laid w 
yl Ireld. paper. — 

" Window curtains of the same for two windows ; 
with either Papier Mache Gornish to them, or Gornish 
covered with the Gloth. 

'' I fine Bed Goverlid to match the Gurtains. 4 
Ghair bottoms of the same ; that is, as much covering 
suited to the above furniture as will go over the seats of 
4 Ghairs (which I have by me) in order to make the 
whole furniture of this Room uniformly handsome and 
genteel. 

" I. Fashionable Sett of Desert Glasses and Stands 
for Sweetmeats Jellys etc. — together with Wash 
Glasses and a proper Stand for these also. — 

'' 2 Setts of Ghamber, or Bed Garpets — Wilton. 



128 George Washington 

" 4. Fashionable China Branches & Stands for 
Candles. 

" 2 Neat fire Screens — 

" 50 lbs. Spirma Citi Candles — 

" 6 Carving Knives and Forks — handles of Stained 
Ivory and bound with Silver. 

" A pretty large Assortment of Grass Seeds — 
among which let there be a good deal of Lucerne and 
St. Foi, especially the former, also a good deal of 
English bleu Grass Clover Seed I have — 

" I Large neat and Easy Couch for a Passage. 

'' 50 yards of best Floor Matting. — 

'' 2 pair of fashionable mixd. or Marble Cold. Silk 
Hose. 

'' 6 pr. of finest cotton Ditto. 

" 6 pr. of finest thread Ditto. 

" 6 pr. of midling Do. to cost abt 5/ 

" 6 pr worsted Do of yl best Sorted — 2 pr of wch to 
be white. 

" N. B. All the above Stockings to be long, and 
tolerably large. 

'' I piece of finest and most fashionable Stock Tape. 

" I Suit of Cloaths of the finest Cloth & fashionable 
colour made by the Inclos'd measure. — 

*' The newest and most approvd Treatise of Agri- 
culture — besides this, send me a Small piece in Octavo 
— called a New System of Agriculture, or a Speedy 
Way to grow Rich. 

" Longley's Book of Gardening. — 

" Gibson, upon Horses, the lattest Edition in 
Quarto — 

*' Half a dozn pair of Men's neatest shoes, and 
Pumps, to be made by one Didsbury on Colo. Baylor's 



Arcady 129 

Last — but a little larger than his — & to have high 
heels — 

" 6 pr Mens riding Gloves — rather large than the 
middle size. 

" One neat Pocket Book, capable of receiving Mem- 
orandoms & Small Cash accts. to be made of Ivory, 
or any thing else that will admit of cleaning. — 

" Fine Soft Calf Skin for a pair of Boots — 

*' Ben leathr. for Soles. 

" Six Bottles of Greenhows Tincture. 

" Order from the best House in Madeira a Pipe of 
the best Old Wine, and let it be securd from Pil- 
ferers." ^ 

Having married a fashionable woman — a sen- 
sible '' nut-brov;^n maid," so brunette of complexion 
and brilliant of eye that tradition called her " the 
dark ladye " — Washington felt it necessary to be 
fashionable too, in all his dress and appointments; 
shoes, saddles, gloves, glass, table-ware, beds, dra- 
peries, silken hose, and daily habiliments must all 
be of fashionable type, cut, or kind ; the ancient hos- 
pitalities of the place must be kept up with a pipe 
of the best Madeira; ivory-handled knives, inlaid 
with silver, must grace the festal board, while papier- 
mache mouldings set off the windows whose flow- 
ing draperies must come from London. 

The Arcadian life, which was to last nearly fif- 
teen years, had begun. Agriculture, gardening, 
horses, tobacco : these are to fill the gallant Colo- 
nel's life for the next half-generation, and to occupy 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, pp. 126-129. 



130 George Washington 

time and attention once wholly given to Indian 
warfare, expeditions into the wilderness, the settle- 
ment of the Ohio Company's affairs in the region 
of " The Beautiful River," to active and earnest 
correspondence with Dinwiddie about frontier dif- 
ficulties, building of forts, enrolment or desertion 
of troops, the thousand what-nots of responsible 
official life under Lord Albemarle, or the Earl of 
Loudon. 

The ten years of intense activity, between 1749 
and 1759, were to be succeeded by fifteen years of 
halcyon calm — halcyon as compared with the unhal- 
lowed activities of the frontier — during which he 
was to pass through another and most honourable 
phase of his education for greater things, his fifteen 
years' service in the Virginia House of Burgesses. 
A premonition of this service crops out in the fol- 
lowing anecdote, preserved for us by William Wirt, 
to whom it was related by Edmund Randolph, an 
eye-witness of the scene : 

" Colonel Washington resided with his wife at the 
White House, for three months after marriage, for 
his duties as a member of the house of burgesses re- 
quired his presence at Williamsburg a considerable 
portion of that time. Soon after the meeting of that 
body, in January, it was resolved to return their thanks 
to Washington, in a public manner, for the distin- 
guished services which he had rendered to his country. 
His tried friend, Mr. Robinson, was yet the speaker, 
and upon him devolved the duty." 

The scene on the occasion, as related by Mr. Wirt, 



Arcady 131 

on the authority of an eye-witness, was a memorable 
one. 

" As soon as Colonel Washington took his seat," 
says Wirt, *' Mr. Robinson, in obedience to this order, 
and following the impulse of his own generous and 
grateful heart, discharged the duty with great dignity, 
but with such warmth of coloring, and strength of 
expression, as entirely to confound the young hero. 
He rose to express his acknowledgments for the 
honor; but such was his trepidation and confusion, 
that he could not give distinct utterance to a single 
syllable. He blushed, stammered, and trembled for a 
second ; when the speaker relieved him, by a stroke of 
address that would have done honor to Louis the 
Fourteenth in his proudest and happiest moment. * Sit 
down, Mr. Washington/ said he, with a conciliatory 
smile, ' your modesty is equal to your valor, and that 
surpasses the power of any language that I possess.' " ^ 

We see the young officer poring over Longley's 
Book of Gardening, " the newest and most impor- 
tant Treatise of Agriculture," '' a small piece in 
Octavo — called A New System of Agriculture/' 
and Gibson upon Horses, " the latest Edition in 
Quarto," intent upon renewing his lands and gar- 
dens and grounds, delightful reminiscences of which 
still remain in the surroundings of Mount Vernon. 
His passion for fine breeds of horses is evidenced 
by his early order for Gibson's book on the subject, 
and many are the references, in the correspondence, 

^ Lossing, Washington and the American Republic, vol. i, 
p. 288. 



132 Georg-e Washington 

to the noble succession of blooded steeds that fol- 
lowed each other in his stables — Ajax, and Blue- 
skin, and Silver Eye, and Shakspere, Magnolia, 
and Prescott, and Jackson, and Nelson, the charger 
ridden at Cornwallis's surrender in 1781, but never 
again, thereafter, mounted. 

The young master of Mount Vernon was one of 
those buoyant and irrepressible personalities, who 
by the mere force of their buoyancy and irrepres- 
sibility must always rise to the top whether in peace 
or war. For a hundred miles around he was the 
envy and admiration of the colonial gentry, a stand- 
ing candidate when an election for burgesses was 
to be held, as constantly re-elected, a toast at planta- 
tion tables where he was Othello to many a 
Desdemona, a godfather in demand by the baby Vir- 
ginians, who took the opportunity of the mid-cen- 
tury to appear upon the scene, a welcome friend and 
adviser to those who claimed his scientific or prac- 
tical knowledge. 

The Rev. Andrew Burnaby alludes, in an ex- 
tended footnote, to the universal esteem in which 
Washington was ever thus held after his gallantry 
in the Braddock expedition, and, describing the 
political character of the Virginians of the time, 
remarks : 

'* The public or political character of the Virginians 
corresponds with their private one: they are haughty 
and jealous of their liberties, impatient of restraint, 
and can scarcely bear the thought of being controuled 
by any superior power. Many of them consider the 



Arcady 133 

colonies as independent states, not connected with 
Great Britain, otherwise than by having the same com- 
mon king, and being bound to her by natural affection. 
There are but few of them that have a turn for busi- 
ness, and even those are by no means expert at it. I 
have known them, upon a very urgent occasion, vote 
the relief of a garrison, without once considering 
whether the thing was practicable, when it was most 
evidently and demonstrably otherwise. In matters of 
commerce they are ignorant of the necessary principles 
that must prevail between a colony and the mother 
country ; they think it a hardship not to have an un- 
limited trade to every part of the world. They consider 
the duties upon their staple as injurious only to them- 
selves ; and it is utterly impossible to persuade them 
that they affect the consumer also. However, to do 
them justice, the same spirit of generosity prevails here 
which does in their private character ; they never re- 
fuse any necessary supplies for the support of gov- 
ernment when called upon, and are a generous and 
loyal people. 

" The women are, generally speaking, handsome, 
though not to be compared with our fair country- 
women in England. They have but few advantages, 
and consequently are seldom accomplished ; this makes 
them reserved, and unequal to any interesting or re- 
fined conversation. They are immoderately fond of 
dancing, and indeed it is almost the only amusement 
they partake of: but even in this they discover want 
of taste and elegance, and seldom appear with that 
gracefulness and ease, which these movements are 
calculated to display." ^ 

* A. Burnaby, Travels Through North America, pp. 55-56. 



134 Georg^e Washing^ton 

Virginia, indeed, was about to enter into that 
*' imminent deadly breach," which even now was 
widening fearfully between mother and daughter, 
and could only be bridged over by thousands of 
slain and millions of money. The venerable arch- 
deacon, fresh from his Greenwich vicarage, and full 
of his old-world sensitiveness to impressions, felt 
this growing independence of Virginia, and breathed 
it vigorously into the ear of his countrymen as soon 
as he returned to England. 

Washington's Journal of this period is filled with 
minute and interesting particulars of his life and 
occupations a year after his marriage. " Mrs. Wash- 
ington is taken down with Meazles," and ladies 
and gentlemen come and go in their '' chariots," 
which lumber from plantation to plantation in the 
slow manner of the time. Bishop Meade, in his 
Old Churches^ gives a quaint account of the fates 
and fortunes of one of the Washington chariots 
which fell into his possession: 

" There was, however, one object of interest belong- 
ing to General Washington, concerning which I have 
a special right to speak, — viz.: his old English coach, 
in which himself and Mrs. Washington not only rode 
in Fairfax county, but travelled through the length 
and breadth of our land. So faithfully was it executed 
that, at the conclusion of this long journey, its builder, 
who came over with it and settled in Alexandria, was 
proud to be told by the General that not a nail or screw 
had failed. It so happened, in a way I need not state, 
that this coach came into my hands about fifteen years 



Arcady 135 

after the death of General Washington. In the course 
of time, from disuse, it being too heavy for these lat- 
ter days, it began to decay and give way. Becoming 
an object of desire to those who delight in relics, I 
caused it to be taken to pieces and distributed among 
the admiring friends of Washington who visited my 
house, and also among a number of female associations 
for benevolent and religious objects, which associa- 
tions, at their fairs and on other occasions, made a 
large profit by converting the fragments into walking- 
sticks, picture-frames, and snuff-boxes. About two- 
thirds of one of the wheels thus produced one hundred 
and forty dollars. There can be no doubt but that 
at its dissolution it yielded more to the cause of charity 
than it did to its builder at its first erection. Besides 
other mementos of it, I have in my study, in the form 
of a sofa, the hind-seat, on which the General and his 
lady were wont to sit." ^ 

'' I have always considered marriage," wrote 
Washington, '' as the most interesting event of one's 
life " ; '' you too," he wrote to Chastellux, " have 
caught that terrible contagion domestic felicity — 
which same, like the smallpox or the plague, a man 
can have only once in his life; because it commonly 
lasts him (at least with us in America, — I don't 
know how you manage these matters in France) for 
his whole lifetime." 

Washington had indeed " caught the contagion " 
of which he whites, once for all. Always a favourite 
with women, who wrote to him off and on during 

* Bishop Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, 
vol. ii, p. 237. 



136 Georg-e Washington 

his entire life, and eagerly courted his notice both 
during the dark and the bright days of the Revolu- 
tion, he has left many charming references to them 
in his letters to Nellie Custis, Mrs. Fairfax, 
'' Jackie " Custis's widow, and others, and he ex- 
celled in all the polite accomplishments which the 
women of the eighteenth century were supposed 
most to desire. He rode well, was an accomplished 
dancer (keeping up the Terpsichorean grace till he 
was sixty-six), played loo, whist, and other games, 
though never with the feverish passion of Charles 
James Fox, and his other great contemporaries 
across the water; was a tried pedestrian, thinking 
nothing (as Burnaby says) of walking four hun- 
dred miles to the Ohio and back, on his mission to 
St. Pierre; and was an adept in swordmanship, 
learned from his old teacher. Van Braam. 

No apothecary's or mercer's clerk could be more 
minute than he, when he was ordering medicines 
for Mount Vernon or dress-goods for Mrs. Wash- 
ington; and Master John and Miss Patsy came in 
for their London orders on Gary & Co., for all 
sorts of haberdashery, trinkets, toys, dolls (" fash- 
ionable " at 10 shillings), children's books, pastes, 
powders, perfumes, '' trifles light as air," yet heavy 
enough to load a good ship, travelling Virginia- 
ward in the changeable frost-laden weather of 1760. 
Even a pair of stays is ordered for the tiny miss of 
four, and pumps and breast-knots, ribbons for the 
hair, and buckles for the shoes, ivory combs and 
" minikin " and corking pins, packs of playing cards, 



Arcady 137 

bell-glasses, scarlet broadcloth, " Easter Hats at 
about 5 Shillings," and ct ceteras innumerable, pic- 
turesquely interspersed with orders for green tea, 
cheese, plantation utensils, jalap, and hogsheads of 
porter. 

Tobacco was at that time (Burnaby) selling at 
fifty shillings a hundredweight; and Washington 
is very solicitous about the great staple, 16,000 
pounds of which was lawful salary for a " parson," 
of whom there were then between sixty and seventy, 
mostly praiseworthy persons, says the archdeacon, 
in the province. 

The broad Potomac stretched in shining silver 
at the door, and there on many a summer's day, 
or springtime morning, when the marvellous shoals 
of shad and herring began their ruil up the river, 
might be witnessed the tragedy chronicled in the 
archdeacon's pages: 

" A very curious sight is frequently exhibited upon 
this and the other great rivers in Virginia, which for 
its novelty is exceedingly diverting to strangers. Dur- 
ing the spring and summer months the fishing-hawk 
is often seen hovering over the rivers, or resting on 
the wing without the least visible change of place for 
some minutes, then suddenly darting down and plung- 
ing into the water, from whence it seldom rises again 
without a rock fish, or some other considerable fish, 
in its talons. It immediately shakes off the water like 
a mist, and makes the best of its way towards the 
woods. The bald eagle, which is generally upon the 
watch, instantly pursues, and if it can overtake^ en- 



138 Georg-e Washing-ton 

deavours to soar above it. The hawk growing soli- 
citous for its own safety drops the fish, and the bald 
eagle immediately stoops, and seldom fails to catch it 
in its pounces before it reaches the water." ^ 

Many a time did Washington, doubtless, become 
a spectator of the airy battle, as he strode up and 
down the pillared portico of his residence, and 
looked out over the river to the soft, blue hills of the 
Dominion of Maryland, where ninety thousand loyal 
subjects of King George III. (but just proclaimed 
King) then dwelt in peace and plenty; times so 
peaceful and plenteous that diamond-back terrapin 
were fed to negroes, and wild-duck — teal, mallard, 
red-head, or what not — to him that fancied it. 

Visits to this delectable land varied with trips to 
Williamsburg, and trots to Alexandria, in chaise, 
chariot, or aback of one of the fine saddle-horses. 
Hardly a day passed without the round of the plan- 
tations being traversed over ten or fifteen miles of 
delightful woodland, or through fields where the 
bannered tobacco lifted its pale-green, mullein-like 
stalks, and flung to the breeze those wonderfully 
delicate leaves which, from the cradle to the grave, 
from burgeon to blossom and ripening sweetness, 
needed tireless vigilance against worm and blight 
and pest of every description, until they turned into 
the golden leaves that, literally, became leaves of 
gold in the warehouses of Robert Gary & Go., of 
the London market. 

* A. Burnaby, Travels Through North America, p. 68. 



Arcady 139 

The vast leisure of Arcadian life lent Washington 
time for those huge invoices — all in his own auto- 
graph — which he from time to time despatched to 
London, invoices which give faithful glimpses of 
the luxury of the years antedating '76, as well as of 
the details of a well-ordered gentleman's household. 

As Washington re-wrote his " dear Patsy's " let- 
ters for her when occasion required, so, doubtless, 
the pair consulted together over these marvellous 
lists to be forwarded to London, including every- 
thing from '' white and brown sugar Candy " to 
" tester Bedsteads," emetics, purges, brimstone, 
" spermi Ceti " candles, and exact measurements 
for " shoes like Colonel Baylor's." 

Intense must have been the excitement and amuse- 
ment in the Mount Vernon household, when some 
agile little '' picaninny " came flying up to the 
" Great House," and announced that a white-sailed 
brig or bark had dropped anchor at the wharf below, 
while the browned and whiskered master, tawny 
with sea-salt and sunburn, asked for Colonel Wash- 
ington. 

And the unpacking of such an invoice as the four 
or five double-columned one, on page 134 of Ford's 
Writings of George Washington, must have been 
the opening of the realm of King Santa Claus him- 
self, when it reached Mount Vernon. 

Interesting accounts exist of the celebration of 
Christmas at this very time, in the Old Dominion, 
in the Journal kept by a Princeton divinity student, 
then tutor at Nomini Hall, seat of the Carters, not 



I40 George Washington 

far from Mount Vernon, and within convenient 
riding distance of Bushfield, where John Augustine 
Washington Hved, and of Mount Airy, the lovely 
and lordly seat of the Tayloes (still in existence). 

This w^orthy gentleman went down to Virginia, 
what the slang of the day called a " blue " Pres- 
byterian ; but after a year's residence at " Nomini 
Hall" became almost a "perverted" Episcopalian in 
point of reverence for dancing, horse-racing, cock- 
fighting, " stepping the minuet," toasting the ladies, 
and other genial amusements then prevalent in the 
" Northern Neck." The negroes (of whom there 
were six hundred on the sixty thousand Carter 
acres) expected liberal remembrances in the way of 
''bits" and half-bits (parts of a divided pisterine, 
used as currency, and equivalent to a few pence, 
English), rum-and-water, '' pisimmon " extract (as 
Master Fithian writes it), and other potential spirit- 
uous agencies; the gentry rode from plantation to 
plantation forming house-parties or giving balls, 
ladies in the gorgeous quilted skirts, bodices, and 
brocades of the period, with creped hair, fantastic- 
ally wreathed with artificial flowers and strings of 
pearls, " tripped the light fantastic toe " through the 
mazes of the dance until dawn glistened over the 
rosy Potomac, and marches, jigs, reels, and '' coun- 
try dances " (cotillions) succeeded each other in 
swift profusion. Councillor Carter was a born 
musician, and his house resounded with the tinkling 
guitar, the silvery harmonicum (just invented by 
the all-accomplished Benjamin Franklin), the violin, 




WASHINGTON MEDAL (1776). 



Arcady 141 

flute, harpsichord, and organ; each of the seven 
children played on something or other, and even the 
Presbyterian tutor beguiles one of the Carter boys 
to play the flute for him twenty minutes every night 
after he had retired to bed. Nellie Custis's harpsi- 
chord — on which " she played and cried and cried 
and played " when her inexorable grandmamma, 
Mrs. Washington, made her practice six hours a 
day — and Washington's flute were not yet part of 
the paraphernalia of Mount Vernon; but there can 
be no doubt of the Colonel's fondness for music, 
dancing, the whist-table (note the two dozen packs 
of playing cards ordered in one of his invoices), the 
back of a fine horse, and the soft swing and swoop 
of a luxurious chariot. It is on record that he 
danced three hours hand-running, without once sit- 
ting down, when Mrs. Nathaniel Greene, wife of 
the General, was his partner at a historic ball ; while 
his ever-conscientious expense-book records, in 1756 
or '57, " 8 Shillings at Cards " and sundry sums for 
" treats " to the Philadelphia ladies, at the time 
when the fair eyes of Mary Philipse rested benev- 
olently for a moment on him. His fondness for 
theatres and theatricals was always a marked char- 
acteristic, and numerous are the allusions to them 
in his social correspondence and the gazettes of the 
time. 

Even Arcady, however, had to surrender to punc- 
tilio and punctuality : the timepieces of Mount 
Vernon — gilt French, or '' grandfather " chronom- 
eters as they might be — marked off the hours with 



142 George Washing-ton 

a systematic regularity and even rigour, which 
startled more than one easy-going guest. The 
Arcadian couple rose at dawn, when the lady betook 
herself to her Bible and her housekeeping, and the 
lord (after building his own fire, shaving himself 
neatly, and tying his own cue) went forth to inspect 
stables and kennels, then back to his favourite 
breakfast of tea and corn-cakes. 

After breakfast, donning his drab riding-suit, 
high boots, and gauntlets, he rode one of his excel- 
lent horses over the plantation, visited the wheat 
and tobacco-fields, interviewed the overseer, in- 
spected the mills, fisheries, negro quarters, listened 
sympathetically to the complaints of the sick and 
aged, had them humanely attended to, and returned 
to the mansion to " post his accounts " (a favourite 
occupation), study his gardening or horse-breeding 
manuals, look over the Williamsburg Gazette, with 
its already perceptible mutterings of discontent and 
revolution, or converse with the guests, who were 
already beginning to make of Mount Vernon what 
he, later, described it to his mother as, '' a tavern." 
Dr. Burnaby was one of the countless host who en- 
joyed this unbroken hospitality, a hospitality dupli- 
cated in a slight degree, a hundred years later, at 
Craigie House, when every distinguished foreigner 
that visited America bore a letter to Longfellow. 

At three o'clock, dinner was served, Washington 
never allowing more than five minutes' difference 
in watches to delay the meal, and humorously throw- 
ing the blame for the inopportune punctuality on the 



Arcady 143 

cook, " who could not wait." In about an hour the 
meal was over, and then, towards five or six, after 
the habitual nuts, raisins, and toasts — " to the fair," 
to the " Sons of Liberty," to " American trade and 
commerce" (as time wagged on towards 1776), 
came the ever-delightful tea and its deshabille talk. 

Washington took no supper. 

At nine o'clock, taking up a candle in its bright 
brass candlestick, the host mounted the staircase 
and lighted his more distinguished guests, person- 
ally, to bed. 

Of course, the routine varied when balls or 
entertainments or evening parties were formally 
given, and the neighbours at Gunston Hall, Belvoir, 
Nomini Hall, or Mount Airy assembled to do 
honour to the mistress of Mount Vernon in a set 
entertainment. Then, indeed, the musical chimes 
in the old clocks jingled out the midnight hour many 
a time and oft, and the flying hours (as in the ex- 
quisite fresco of Guido) saw the high-heeled dames, 
and powdered and ruffled cavaliers still entangled 
in the meshes of the latest dance from Versailles or 
St. James's. 

The worthy Fithian w.as rudely tempted by these 
gracious pleasantries, and often expressed his bitter 
regrets that he could not conscientiously enter into 
the innocent and harmless gaieties of the Virginians. 
One thing, however, he could not help doing: he 
would toast the absent " Laura," when it fell his 
turn — as it did to old Caedmon a thousand years 
before — " to play at the harp and sing a song," i.e., 



144 Georg-e Washington 

to drink a toast; and Fithian gladly did so with 
the gallants of Nomini Hall. Indeed, his Diary 
(dated 1773-74) contains various and sundry en- 
tries of strong drinks and potations for a sick body, 
somewhat inconsistent with the contempt showered, 
occasionally, on the junketting Virginians, whose 
'' rings of beaux " stand outside the churches on 
Sundays, until the parson sends the clerk to hale 
them in to proper service, and dame and cavalier go 
around giving invitations to dinner after a fifteen 
minutes' sermon. Seeing that Councillor Carter 
successively went through the phases of the Estab- 
lished, the Baptist, and the Swedenborgian churches, 
and wound up by becoming a Papist, the young 
Presbyterian divine had ample opportunity at least 
to exercise his theological acumen. But he never 
swerved from the Westminster Catechism, and died 
a gallant soldier, sick of camp fever, at Fort Wash- 
ington in 1776, Virginia, to the last, abiding a pleas- 
ant memory in his soul. 

The old baronial style of living, between the par- 
allels of the original grant, was in this decade in its 
full glory: the Byrds of Westover, the Harrisons 
and Carters of Brandon and Shirley, the Lewises of 
Kenmore, the Fairfaxes of Greenway Court and 
Belvoir, the Masons of Gunston Hall, the Calverts 
over the Potomac, as it swept grandly from its cata- 
ract to the Chesapeake, the Pages and Nelsons of 
Rosewell, the Lees of Stratford and Chantilly — all 
kept up an easy-going, semi-feudal state, into which 
the Washingtons as easily fell by right of lineage. 



Arcady 1 45 

as well as of wealth and influential position in colo- 
nial circles. The Parkes had distinguished them- 
selves in many a hard-fought campaign under 
Marlborough, and Queen Anne, herself, had be- 
stowed her jewelled likeness and a brace of silver 
candlesticks (still owned by the Lee family) on the 
ancestor of the line, who first brought to her tidings 
of the great victory of Blenheim ; and kindred over- 
sea were speedily to contend for the honour of even 
a remote connection with the stars, mullets, bars, 
and heraldic raven of the Washingtons. 

And thus the golden days — the Saturnia regna 
sung in enchanting measures by the Mantuan poet 
— went by, and Washington might well repeat to 
the Marquis de Chastellux that '' the married state 
was the most interesting in the world." 

He had reached the Golden Milestone. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE GOLDEN MILESTONE 

WASHINGTON was now eight-and-twenty, an 
age at which the younger Pitt was already 
prime minister of Great Britain, Burke had already 
written '' On the Sublime and Beautiful," the ora- 
tory of Charles James Fox had begun to assume a 
ripened effulgence, and a whole band of young im- 
mortals — Goethe, Burns, Lucan, Hugo, Byron — 
were already basking in the golden light which 
legend wreathed poetically about the summit of 
" twin-peaked Parnassus " ; yet nothing fantastic- 
ally precocious as yet appeared in the steadfast 
young American, settled at Mount Vernon as a 
model farmer, and pursuing the bucolic pleasures 
of agriculture as tranquilly as if he had just stepped 
out of the Ge orgies of Virgil. The restful years 
that followed the volcanic decade of 1750- 1760 were 
years of quiet preparation, unconscious maturing of 
the intellectual powers, unnoticed growth in political 
sagacity, and gathering of virile strength for use in 
the approaching struggle with the mother-country. 
The Rev. Samuel Davies, in a sermon preached 
in Pennsylvania, shortly after Braddock's defeat, 
had prophetically foreshadowed Washington's life 
when he said : 

146 



The Golden Milestone 147 

" As a remarkable instance of this, I may point out 
to the pubHc that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, 
whom I cannot but hope Providence has hitherto pre- 
served in so signal a manner for some important ser- 
vice to his country." ^ 

This " heroic lad " had steadily grown into the 
formidable and accomplished leader who, on resign- 
ing his colonelcy in 1759, after his arduous duties 
were consummated, was affectionately addressed 
by his associate officers in the following terms : 

" ' Judge, then, how sensibly we must be affected 
with the loss of such an excellent commander, such a 
sincere friend, and so affable a companion. How rare 
is it to find these amiable qualities blended in one 
man ! How great the loss of such a man ! ... It 
gives us additional sorrow,' they continued, ' when 
we reflect, to find our unhappy country will receive 
a loss no less irreparable than our own. Where will 
it meet a man, so experienced in military affairs — one 
so renowned for patriotism, conduct, and courage? 
Who has so great a knowledge of the enemy we have 
to deal with? who so well acquainted with their sit- 
uation and strength? who so much respected by the 
soldiery? who, in short, so able to support the military 
character of Virginia? ' " ^ 

Then requesting him to name a fit successor, 
they added in conclusion : 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 176, 
note. 

^ Lossing, Washington and the American Republic, vol. 
i, p. 286. 



148 George Washing-ton 

" ' Frankness, sincerity, and certain openness of soul, 
are the true characteristics of an officer, and we flat- 
ter ourselves that you do not think us capable of say- 
ing anything contrary to the purest dictates of our 
minds. Fully persuaded of this, we beg leave to as- 
sure you that, as you have hitherto been the actuating 
soul of our whole corps, we shall at all times pay 
the most invariable regard to your will and pleasure, 
and will always be happy to demonstrate by our actions 
how much we respect and esteem you.' 

" ' This opinion,' says Marshall, ' was not confined 
to the officers of his regiment. It was common to Vir- 
ginia, and had been adopted by the British officers 
with whom he served. The duties he performed, 
though not splendid, were arduous ; and were executed 
with zeal and with judgment. The exact discipline 
he established in his regiment, when the temper of 
Virginia was extremely hostile to discipline, does 
credit to his military character ; and the gallantry his 
troops displayed, whenever called into action, mani- 
fests the spirit infused into them by their com- 
mander.' " ^ 

After the strenuous military experience of 1753- 
T758, it was most fitting that the next stage in this 
remarkable career should be pastoral, almost bucolic, 
the life of a quiet country gentleman who, having 
married a woman of wealth and refinement, settles 
down to a domestic felicity, which he playfully de- 
scribes to the Marquis de Chastellux as *' a con- 
tagion " that has at length caught the misanthrope 

^ Lossing, Washington and the American Republic, vol. 
i, p. 286. 



The Golden Milestone 149 

himself. Washington could not read French, and 
perhaps had never even heard of Moliere, and yet, 
in his humorous raillery of the marquis, he uncon- 
sciously reproduces the denoitment of Le Misan- 
thrope. 

A little over a hundred miles from Mount Vernon 
lay Williamsburg, the old colonial capital where a 
hundred and odd gentlemen, calling themselves bur- 
gesses, met as the people's representatives, discussed 
public questions affecting the commonwealth, voted 
supplies for the maintenance of the colonial gov- 
ernment, and constituted one of those marvellous 
playgrounds of politics and statesmanship, thirteen 
of which were soon to write in federal union, and 
produce the document which Gladstone called the 
most wonderful that ever emanated from the brain 
of man — the American Constitution. 

Some of these plain country gentlemen had been 
educated in England, at Oxford, or Lincoln's Inn, 
or had been classically trained in philosophy and the 
humanities under the six professors of William and 
Mary College, the Alma Mater of Jefferson, Mon- 
roe, Tyler, and Chief Justice Marshall, the college 
of which Washington became chancellor in 1777. 

This quaint old sprawling village — truly a " city 
of magnificent distances " as it stretched east and 
west into the primeval forest, and gathered into its 
skirts ample spaces of the Middle Plantation — was 
part of this time under the social sovereignty of 
Lord Botetourt, a man whose grace of manner and 
firmness of touch led Horace Walpole to charac- 



150 Georg-e Washington 

terise him as " a bit of enamelled iron." The charm 
of his ostentatious courtesy and high spirits led 
Virginia to remember him with pleasure, and name 
one of her most beautiful counties after him, as 
she cherished the name and fame of Berkeley, Spots- 
wood, Fairfax, Loudon, Fauquier, and Dinwiddie. 

Many of the wealthier planter burgesses had 
homes at Williamsburg, where they kept open house 
in the fashion of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage, 
and where, at the ever-spread table, it fairly " snew " 
with abundance of good things for the delectation 
of the nomad legislator. 

Hither the Washingtons came during the fifteen 
years the Colonel was a member of the House; and 
it may readily be inferred, that the representative 
of Fairfax County stood easily among the first, 
in that company of a hundred gentlemen and schol- 
ars whom Virginia had assembled, at the Raleigh 
Tavern or in the palace of Lord Botetourt, to dis- 
cuss and decide subjects vital to her interests. 

It is a strange fact, that Washington's corre- 
spondence is almost bare of references to his legis- 
lative life at Williamsburg, the numerous letters 
and diaries that remain being absorbed almost 
wholly with domestic matters, the management of 
his estates, orders on London for household use, 
occasional sharp reproofs to his London agents for 
extortionate charges and mean quality of goods, 
and detailed communications to the Governor, 
Council, and others, relative to land surveys and the 
taking up of reservations on the Ohio and Great 



The Golden Milestone 151 

Kanawha. Washington was what would now be 
called " land-hungry," and possessed a keen eye for 
the choice and appropriation of the rich black bot- 
tom lands along the rivers of the western country. 
His experience as a land-surveyor — a position to 
which he had in his youth been licensed by William 
and Mary College — had educated both eye and 
judgment in the discovery of soils and locations 
adapted to agriculture, while the generous scale on 
which the life at Mount Vernon was laid out com- 
pelled him to husband and enlarge his resources in 
every legitimate way possible. It is curious to read 
his responses to would-be borrowers who, presum- 
ing on the lavish hospitality that prevailed at Mount 
Vernon, wrote to ask sums ranging from twenty to 
five hundred pounds. Mrs. W^ashington's two hun- 
dred or three hundred negroes were hardly suffi- 
cient to run the various plantations, and there are 
occasional references to the purchase of skilled 
labourers, masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, and the 
like — whose " likeliness " can be turned to the profit 
of the estate. 

Washington did not touch tobacco in any shape 
or form, but his farmer's instinct was much con- 
centrated on the cultivation of the weed, which, 
besides tlie fragrant leaf, turned out the crop of 
*' barons of the Potomac " who made this lordly 
river celebrated. 

As there were few towns in Virginia then worth 
speaking of, Washington's letters to his agents 
abound in directions to sail for the Potomac River, 



152 George Washington 

" which flows past my seat," and not to the York or 
Rappahannock, where Mrs. Washington's relatives 
reside; the anchorage at Mount Vernon being par- 
ticularly good, free from wind, and sheltered from 
weather vicissitudes. 

The goods that came from London frequently 
arrived at the wrong landing, variously damaged or 
mutilated, in bad condition owing to hurried disem- 
barkation or careless packing. During this con- 
templative stage of his existence, the Colonel found 
time to order, from a London art dealer, plaster 
busts of Alexander, Julius Csesar, Prince Eugene, 
the Duke of Marlborough, and the King of Prussia ; 
adding to this formidable list of military heroes, 
gentler concessions to the fair sex in the shape of 
groups of Bacchus and Flora, " Lyons " rampant or 
otherwise for the chimneypiece, and a long list of 
literary celebrities, such as Chaucer, Spenser, Shak- 
spere, and certain Greek and Roman poets. Among 
these details a green silk " Saque " of Mrs. Wash- 
ington's finds lodgment, which is to be re-dyed and 
made over or " turned into a genteel night-gown." 

The sylvan chronicle moves quaintly on, and em- 
braces among much else the following : 

" Went a fox huntg. with Lord Fairfax and Colo. 
Fairfax, and my Br. Catchd. 2 Foxes. Began to 
gather corn at the Mill. 

" 23. Went a huntg. again with Lord Fairfax and 
his Brother, and Col. Fairfax. Catchd. nothing that 
we knew of. A fox was started. 



The Golden Milestone 153 

" 24. Mr. Robt. Alexander here ; Went into the 
Neck. 

" 25. Mr. Bryan Fairfax, as also Messrs. Grayson 
and Phil. Alexander, came here by sunrise. Hunted 
and catchd. a fox with these and my Lord his Bro. and 
Colo. Fairfax, all of whom with Mrs. Fx. and Mr. 
Wetson ( ?) of Engd dined here. 

" 26. Hunted again in the above Compa. but catchd 
nothing. 

" 2y. Went to Church. 

" 28. Went to the Vestry at Pohick Church. 

''29. Went a Huntg. with Lord Fairfax etc. 
Catchd a Fox. 

" 30. At home all day. Colo. Mason and Mr. Cock- 
burne came in the evening. 

'' December 

" I. Went to the Election of Burgesses for this 
County and was there, with Colo. West chosen. 
Stayd all Night to a Ball wch. I had given. 

'' 2. Returnd home after dinner, accompanied by 
Colo. Mason, Mr. Cockburn and Messrs. Henderson 
Ross and Lawson. 

" 3. Went a fox huntg. in Company with Lord and 
Colo. Fairfax, Captn. McCarty and Messrs. Hender- 
son and Ross. Started nothing. My Br. came in ye 
afternoon." ^ 

In 1772, a famous portrait-painter comes along, 
and Charles Wilson Peale paints for us the well- 
known portrait of Washington as Colonel of the 
22nd Virginia regiment, in blue coat faced with 

*Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 255. 



154 Georg-e Washing-ton 

scarlet, " Wolfe " hat, sash, and gorget — a picture 
now hanging in the chapel of Washington and Lee 
University at Lexington, Virginia. Peak also 
painted charming portraits of Mrs. Washington and 
her daughter and son, still owned by descendants of 
the family. Washington writes humorously of the 
sittings : 

" To Dr. Boucher 
" Mount Vernon, 21st May, 1772. 
'' Inclination having yielded to Importunity, I am 
now contrary to all expectation under the hands of Mr. 
Peale ; but in so grave — so sullen a mood — and now 
and then under the influence of Morpheus, when some 
critical strokes are making, that I fancy the skill of 
this Gentleman's Pencil, will be put to it, in describing 
to the World what manner of man I am." ^ 

Thus in easy round of work, exercise, and enter- 
tainment, life on the Potomac in the sixties wagged 
along, filled with the busy nothings of rural exist- 
ence on a great plantation; the clatter of horse and 
hounds rang over the clear frosty hills, as the fox- 
hunting cavalcade, headed by Washington on 
*' Blueskin," and Billy Lee on " Chickling," thun- 
dered over hill and dale after the grey foxes that 
" Vulcan," " Music," or " Sweet Lips " had started 
from their woodland lairs. Frosty Januarys faded 
into flowering Mays, and the bright Virginian sum- 
mers ripened into those exquisite Octobers that sage 
meteorologists, like Burnaby, Fithian, Robert Bever- 

* Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 349. 



The Golden Milestone 155 

ley, and Thomas Jefferson, set down in the weather 
tables or their diaries as the fairest in the world — 
" the season of sweet savours." Twice a year, the 
great ships from London dropped anchor in the 
river opposite the mansion, and unloaded the bales 
and boxes consigned to its owner. 

The rippling smoothness of the chronicle is occa- 
sionally interrupted by an entry of illness, a record 
of a fortnight's absence at the Warm Springs in 
Berkeley County, in search of health, an exchange 
of courtesies with Governor Eden, Lord Dunmore 
(who arrived from New York in 1772, an ominous 
forerunner of Revolution), or the Calverts, or deep 
solicitude about '' Jackie " Custis, the " son-in-law " 
as Washington quaintly calls him, who is wholly 
given to '' horses, dogs, and guns," and has pre- 
maturely taken it into his head to fall in love with 
pretty Miss Calvert, lineal descendant of the Lords 
Baltimore. Washington hastily rides to New York 
and enters the young scapegrace at King's College, 
in the hope of counteracting the fair Marylander's 
charms; but all to no avail. He explains to the 
young lady's father that Custis has an ample for- 
tune of £8,000 " upon bond," fifteen thousand acres 
at or near Williamsburg, and two or three hundred 
negroes, besides his ultimate interest in his mother'? 
dower; but to Dr. Boucher, that the boy at seven- 
teen is almost totally ignorant of arithmetic, knows 
no Latin or Greek, and should know French '' which 
is now deemed one of the indispensable polite 
accomplishments of the day." 



156 Georg-e Washington 

It was during this period that he became deeply 
interested in a project to drain the Dismal Swamp, 
rode down thither on an exploring expedition, and 
examined the great morass almost as fully as 
Colonel Byrd of Westover had done in 1728, when 
establishing the dividing line between Virginia and 
North Carolina. Later on in his life, he became 
profoundly interested in improving the navigation 
of the Potomac, and in the James River and Kana- 
wha Canal project, designed to connect the interior 
water-system of the continent with the ocean. 

Lord Dunmore sought his advice and companion- 
ship, in a proposed journey of inspection and ex- 
ploitation to the Ohio Valley where, in the vicinity 
of Louisville and Cincinnati, titles from his land- 
patents still exist. 

There is no evidence in Washington's letters, 
how he viewed the Mephistophelean character of 
this last royal Governor of Virginia; nor whether 
he credited the accounts of his arrogance and ava- 
rice. The letters from the Colonel to the Earl are 
couched in punctilious forms that seem to have been 
learned from some old-w^orld manual, almost obse- 
quious in their long-drawn-out circumlocutions of 
respect. 

When Sunday came, a great stillness and rev- 
erence fell over Mount Vernon. Washington never 
received visitors on Sunday at this time. Over in 
the noble old woods skirting his estates, six or seven 
miles distant, lay Pohick Church, where the Rev. 
Charles Green had officiated, as Rector of Truro 



The Golden Milestone 157 

Parish, from 1738 to 1765. Of this fine old colo- 
nial church, Bishop Meade gives an interesting 
account : 

'' The Old Pohick Church was a frame building, 
and occupied a site on the south side of Pohick Run, 
and about two miles from the present, which is on the 
north side of the run. When it was no longer fit for 
use, it is said the parishioners were called together to 
determine on the locality of the new church, when 
George Mason, the compatriot of Washington, and 
senior vestryman, advocated the old site, pleading 
that it was the house in which their fathers wor- 
shipped, and that the graves of many were around it, 
while Washington and others advocated a more cen- 
tral and convenient one. The question was left unset- 
tled and another meeting for its decision appointed. 
Meanwhile Washington surveyed the neighbourhood, 
and marked the houses and distances on a well drawn 
map, and, when the day of decision arrived, met all 
the arguments of his opponent by presenting this paper, 
and thus carried his point. In place of any descrip- 
tion of this house in its past or present condition, I 
offer the following report of a visit made to it in 1837 : 

'' My next visit was to Pohick Church, in the vicinity 
of Mount Vernon, the seat of General Washington. 
I designed to perform service there on Saturday as 
well as Sunday, but through some mistake no notice 
was given for the former day. The weather indeed 
was such as to prevent the assembling of any but those 
who prize such occasions so much as to be deterred 
only by very strong considerations. It was still rain- 
ing when I approached the house, and found no one 
there. The wide-open doors invited me to enter, — 



158 Georg-e Washing^ton 

as they do invite, day and night, through the year, not 
only the passing traveller, but every beast of the field 
and fowl of the air. These latter, however, seem 
to have reverenced the house of God, since few marks 
of their pollution are to be seen throughout it. The 
interior of the house, having been well built, is still 
good. The chancel. Communion-table, and tables of 
the law, etc., are still there and in good order. The 
roof only is decaying ; and at the time I was there the 
rain was dropping on these sacred places and on other 
parts of the house. On the doors of the pews, in gilt 
letters, are still to be seen the names of the principal 
families which once occupied them. How could I, 
while for at least an hour traversing those long aisles, 
entering the sacred chancel, ascending the lofty pulpit, 
forbear to ask, And is this the house of God which 
was built by the VVashingtons, the Masons, the Mc- 
Cartys, the Grahams, the Lewises, the Fairfaxes ? — the 
house in which they used to worship the God of our 
fathers according to the venerable forms of the Epis- 
copal Church, — and some of whose names are yet to 
be seen on the doors of those now deserted pews? Is 
this also destined to moulder piecemeal away, or, when 
some signal is given, to become the prey of spoilers, 
and to be carried hither and thither and applied to 
every purpose under heaven? 

'' Surely patriotism, or reverence for the greatest 
of patriots, if not religion, might be effectually ap- 
pealed to in behalf of this one temple of God. The 
particular location of it is to be ascribed to Washing- 
ton, who, being an active member of the vestry when 
it was under consideration and in dispute where it 
should be placed, carefully surveyed the whole parish, 



The Golden Milestone 159 

and, drawing an accurate and handsome map of it 
with his own hand, showed clearly where the claims 
of justice and the interests of religion required its 
erection. 

" It was to this church that Washington for some 
years regularly repaired^ at a distance of six or seven 
miles, never permitting any company to prevent the 
regular observance of the Lord's day." ^ 

After the Revolution, from 1785, the family 
became regular attendants of Christ's Church, Alex- 
andria, where their pew is still shown. 

There can be no reasonable doubt that Washing- 
ton was, from the beginning, a devout believer in 
Christianity; his letters abound in evidences of this 
belief and are full of invocations to Divine Provi- 
dence. His public orders and commands to his 
soldiers, during the war, constantly reminded them 
of their dependence on God, the necessity of suppli- 
cating His mercy and help in the great struggle, 
and the duty of observing Sunday. For a long time 
he w^as a communicant of the Episcopal Church, a 
vestryman of Truro Parish, and diligent in the read- 
ing of sermons and good books at home when the 
weather w^as too inclement for church. He was, 
indeed, markedly punctilious in the observance of 
all his religious duties. He fasted when a day of 
public humiliation, prayer, and fasting was ordered 
by the burgesses on the eve of the Revolution : his 
entry in his diary is : '' Fasted all day." 

^Bishop Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, 
vol. ii, p. 227. 



i6o Georg-e Washing-ton 

Mrs. Washington lived and died a devout com- 
municant of the Church; and, while her husband 
did not take the learned interest in its theology and 
dogma that Jefferson took, there is every reason to 
believe that his life was continually ordered by its 
precepts, from the time he imbibed them from the 
teachings of his excellent mother. 

'' The fierce light that beats against a throne " 
has shone with implacable inquisitiveness into every 
nook and cranny of Washington's soul, but has 
searched in vain to find him anything but a plain, 
high-minded, reverential Christian gentleman. Jef- 
ferson may veil himself in verbal evasions, ingenu- 
ities, and ambiguities, due to over-much erudition 
and a morbid aversion to the methods of the Inqui- 
sition ; but the first President of the United States 
never juggled with words, never quibbled with his 
conscience, and everywhere and on all occasions 
showed himself a simple, plain-spoken, unostenta- 
tious believer in the Christian religion. 

During these idyllic days of plantation life, how- 
ever, chequered with their manifold vicissitudes of 
light and shade, fell one great shadow across the 
threshold of Mount Vernon : Patsy Custis, beloved 
namesake and daughter of Martha Washington, 
was seized with an attack of constitutional malady 
of the heart, and suddenly expired in the bloom of 
her fair young life. The grief caused by this be- 
reavement shows pathetically in a letter of Wash- 
ington, addressed to a friend : 




MARTHA WASHINGTON. 
From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. 



The Golden Milestone i6i 

" To Colonel Bassett 

" Mount Vernon, 20th June, 1773. 
" Dear Sir, 

"It is an easier matter to conceive, than to describe 
the distress of this Family ; especially that of the un- 
happy Parent of our Dear Patsy Custis, when I in- 
form you that yesterday removed the Sweet Innocent 
Girl Entered [sic] into a more happy and peaceful 
abode than any she has met with in the afflicted Path 
she hitherto has trod/ 

'' She arose from Dinner about four o'clock in better 
health and spirits than she appeared to have been 
in for some time; soon after which she was seized 
with one of her usual Fits, and expired in it, in less 
than two minutes without uttering a word, a groan, or 
scarce a sigh. — This sudden, and unexpected blow, I 
scarce need add has almost reduced my poor Wife to 
the lowest ebb of Misery ; which is encreas'd by the 
absence of her son, (whom I have just fixed at the 
College in New York from whence I returned the 8th 
Inst) and want of the balmy consolation of her Rela- 
tions ; which leads me more than ever to wish she could 
see them, and that I was Master of Arguments pow- 
erful enough to prevail upon Mrs. Dandridge [her 
mother] to make this place her entire and absolute 
home. I should think as she lives a lonesome life 
(Betsey being married) it might suit her well, and 
be agreeable, both to herself and my Wife, to me most 
assuredly it would. 

*' I do not purpose to add more at present, the end 

^ " 19. About five o'clock poor Patsy Custis died suddenly." 
— From an interleaved Almanac. 



1 62 George Washing-ton 

of my writing being only to inform you of this un- 
happy change." ^ 

In the course of these halcyon years, Washington 
had several times written that " the grim King of 
Terrors " had come very near to him, but never be- 
fore had he actually entered the Mount Vernon 
household, much less snatched away its fairest 
blossom. 

Mrs. Washington was to survive both her hus- 
band and all her children. 
^Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, pp. 384-385. 



CHAPTER X 

OLD WILLIAMSBURG 

^^T^HE most ancient and loyal colony of Vir- 
1 ginia " has had, in its day (of three hundred 
years), three different capitals, corresponding to its 
three periods of infancy, youth, and maturity. 

Of the first — historic Jamestown — only an ivied 
church tower and a garland of immortal memories 
remain to tell the noble tale of Virginia colonisation, 
historic tatters, tasselled with innumerable threads 
of incident that cling to Virginia's earliest history. 
The eager seas, that brought the merchant adven- 
turers to the New World, ate perpetually at the 
shores of the island city, and threatened to engulf 
it in absolute obliteration, when pious hands, in our 
day, rescued it from this ignoble end. For more 
than ninety years it was the heart and soul of Vir- 
ginia affairs, ravaged by fire and flood, encom- 
passed with bloody hostilities on all sides, from the 
beginning, the centre of a long and tangled history, 
the apparently indestructible old town crumbled and 
rose again, rose and crumbled though breathing in 
great breaths of air from the ocean that stretched 
almost to its feet, and refusing stubbornly to give 
up its semi-royal existence until, in 1698, the re- 
morseless Nicholson tore it up by the roots and 

163 



164 George Washing-ton 

transplanted the ancient shoot to WilHamsburg, a 
few miles inland. 

The Virginia of John Smith, of Sir Francis 
Wyatt, of the fiery Berkeley, the tragic Virginia of 
Powhatan, the Lady Pocahontas, and Nathaniel Ba- 
con, began and ended about the spacious bays and 
rivers amid which Jamestown sat enthroned, look- 
ing wistfully over its blue waters, seemingly per- 
plexed at its own turbulent existence. 

Then, as the advancing tide of settlement and 
immigration marched upward and inward, toward 
the rippling hills that outlined the western horizon 
in blue, a change was made, and a new capital, the 
capital to be for eighty years to come, sprang up 
among the splendid live-oaks and lindens (planted 
by Dunmore) between the York and the James, in 
the Middle Plantation. 

'' Williamsburg," says Burnaby, " is the capital 
of Virginia: it is situated between two creeks, one 
falling into James, the other into York river ; and is 
built nearly due east and west. The distance of 
each landing-place is something more than a mile 
from the town ; which, with the disadvantage of not 
being able to bring up large vessels, is the reason 
of its not having increased so fast as might have 
been expected. It consists of about two hundred 
houses, does not contain more than one thousand 
souls, whites and negroes; and is far from being a 
place of any consequence. It is regularly laid out 
in parallel streets, intersected by others at right 
angles; has a handsome square in the centre, 



Old Williamsburg- 165 

through which runs the principal street, one of the 
most spacious in North America, three quarters of 
a mile in length, and above a hundred feet wide. At 
the opposite ends of this street are two public build- 
ings, the college and the capitol : and although the 
houses are of wood, covered with shingles, and but 
indifferently built, the whole makes a handsome 
appearance. There are few public edifices that de- 
serve to be taken notice of; those, which I have 
mentioned, are the principal ; and they are far from 
being magnificent. The governor's palace is toler- 
ably good, one of the best upon the continent; but 
the church, the prison, and the other buildings, 
are all of them extremely indifferent. The streets 
are not paved, and are consequently very dusty, the 
soil hereabout consisting chiefly of sand : however, 
the situation of Williamsburg has one advantage 
which few or no places in these lower parts have, 
that of being free from mosquitoes. Upon the 
whole, it is an agreeable residence; there are ten or 
twelve gentlemen's families constantly residing in 
it, besides merchants and tradesmen : and at the 
times of the assemblies, and general courts, it is 
crowded with the gentry of the country : on those 
occasions there are balls and other amusements ; but 
as soon as the business is finished, they return to 
their plantations; and the town is in a manner 
deserted." ^ 

" I arrived at Williamsburg at noon," says 

^ A. Burnaby, Travels Through North America, p. ZZ- 



1 66 George Washing-ton 

Lossing, " and proceeded immediately to search out 
the interesting locahties of that ancient and earUest 
incorporated town in Virginia. They are chiefly 
upon the main street, a broad avenue pleasantly 
shaded, and almost as quiet as a rural lane. I first 
took a hasty stroll upon the spacious green in front 
of William and Mary College, the oldest literary 
institution in America except Harvard University. 
The entrance to the green is flanked by stately live- 
oaks, cheering the visitor in winter with their ever- 
green foliage. In the centre of the green stands the 
mutilated statue of Lord Botetourt, the best beloved 
of the colonial governors. This statue was erected 
in the old capitol in 1774, and in 1797 it was re- 
moved to its present position. I did not make a 
sketch of it, because a student at the college prom- 
ised to hand me one made by his own pencil before 
I left the place. He neglected to do so, and there- 
fore I can give nothing pictorially of ' the good 
Governor Botetourt,' the predecessor of Dunmore. 

" I next visited the remains of the palace of Lord 
Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia. It is 
situated at the head of a broad and beautiful court, ex- 
tending northward from the main street, in front of 
the City Hotel. The palace was constructed of brick. 
The centre building was accidentally destroyed by fire, 
while occupied by the French troops immediately after 
the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. It was 
seventy-four feet lons^ and sixty-eight feet wide, and 
occupied the site of the old palace of Governor Spots- 
wood, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At- 



Old Williamsburg 167 

tached to the palace were three hundred and sixty acres 
of land, beautifully laid out in gardens, parks, carriage- 
ways, and a bowling-green. Dunmore imported some 
fine linden-trees from Scotland, one of which, still in 
existence, is one of the finest specimens of that tree I 
have ever seen. In vice-regal pomp and pageantry 
Dunmore attempted to reign among the plain repub- 
licans of Virginia ; but his day of grandeur and power 
soon passed away, and the sun of his official glory set 
amid darkest clouds. All that remains of this spacious 
edifice are the two wings ; the one on the right was the 
office, the one on the left was the guard-house." 

" A little eastward of Palace Street or Court, is the 
public square, on which area are two relics of the olden 
time, B niton Church, a cruciform structure with a stee- 
ple, and the old Magadne, an octagon building, erected 
during the administration of Governor Spotswood. 
The sides of the latter are each twelve feet in horizon- 
tal extent. Surrounding it, also in octagon form, is a 
massive brick wall, which was constructed when the 
building was erected. This wall is somewhat dilapi- 
dated. The building was occupied as a Baptist meeting- 
house when I visited Williamsburg, and I trust it may 
never fall before the hand of improvement, for it has 
an historical value in the minds of all Americans. The 
events which hallow it will be noticed presently. 

'' On the square fronting the magazine is the court- 
house. It stands upon the site of the old capitol, in 
which occurred many interesting events connected with 
the history of our War for Independence. The present 
structure was erected over the ashes of the old one, 
which was burned in 1832. Around it are a few of the 



1 68 Georg-e Washington 

old bricks, half buried in the green sward, and these 
compose the only remains of the Old Capitol." ^ 

Hugh Jones says : 

" The first Metropolis, James Town, was built in the 
most convenient Place for Trade and Security against 
the Indians, but often received much Damage, being 
twice burnt down ; after which it never recovered its 
Perfection, consisting at present of nothing but Abun- 
dance of Brick Rubbish, and three or four good in- 
habited Houses, tho' the Parish is of pretty large Ex- 
tent, but less than others. When the State House and 
Prison were burnt down, Governor Nicholson removed 
the Residence of the Governor, with the Meeting of 
General Courts and General Assemblies to Middle 
Plantation, seven Miles from James Town, in a health- 
ier and more convenient Place, and freer from the An- 
noyance of Muskettoes. 

" Here he laid out the City of Williamshurgh (in the 
Form of a Cypher, made of W. and M.) on a Ridge 
at the Head Springs of two great Creeks, one running 
into James, and the other into York River, which are 
each navigable for sloops, within a Mile of the Town ; 
at the Head of which Creeks are good Landings, and 
Lots laid out, and Dwelling Houses and Ware Houses 
built ; so that this Town is most conveniently situated, 
in the Middle of the lower Part of Virginia, command- 
ing two noble Rivers, not above four Miles from either, 
and is much more commodious and healthful, than if 
built upon a River. 

" Publick Buildings here of Note, are the College, 
the Capitol, Governor's House, and the Church. The 

*Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, vol. ii, p. 262. 



Old Williamsburg- 169 

Latitude of the College at IVilliamsburgh, to the best 
of my Observation, is 37°. 2i\ North. 

" The Front which looks due East is double, and is 
136 Foot long. It is a lofty Pile of Brick Building 
adorn'd with a Cupola. At the North End runs back 
a large Wing, which is a handsome Hall, answerable 
to which the Chapel is to be built ; and there is a spa- 
cious Piazza on the West side, from one Wing to the 
other. It is approached by a good Walk, and a grand 
Entrance by Steps, with good Courts and Gardens 
about it, with a good House and Apartments for the 
Indian Master and his Scholars, and Out-Houses ; and 
a large Pasture enclosed like a Park with about 150 
Acres of Land adjoining, for occasional Uses. 

" The Building is beautiful and commodious, being 
first modelled by Sir Christopher Wren, adapted to the 
Nature of the Country by the Gentlemen there; and 
since it was burnt down, it has been rebuilt, and nicely 
contrived, altered and adorned by the ingenious Direc- 
tion of Governor Spottswood; and is not altogether 
unlike Chelsea Hospital. 

" Fronting the College at near its whole Breadth, is 
extended a noble Street mathematically streight (for 
the first Design of the Town's Form is changed to a 
much better) just three Quarters of a Mile in Length ; 
At the other End of which stands the Capitol, a noble, 
beautiful, and commodious Pile as any of its Kind, built 
at the Cost of the late Queen, and by the Direction of 
the Governor. 

" The Building is in the Form of an H nearly ; the 
Secretary's Office, and the General Court taking up 
one Side below Stairs; the Middle being an handsom 
Portico leading to the Clerk of the Assembly's Office, 



I70 George Washington 

and the House of Burgesses on the other Side ; which 
last is not unhke the House of Commons. 

" In each Wing is a good Stair Case, one leading to 
the Council Chamber, where the Governor and Council 
sit in very great State, in Imitation of the King and 
Council, or the Lord Chancellor and House of Lords. 

*' The whole is surrounded with a neat Area, encom- 
passed with a good Wall, and near it is a strong sweet 
Prison for Criminals; 

" The Cause of my being so particular in describing 
the Capitol is, because it is the best and most commo- 
dious Pile of its Kind that I have seen or heard of. 

" Because the State House, James Tozvn, and the 
College have been burnt down, therefore is prohibited 
in the Capitol the Use of Fire, Candles, and Tobacco. 

** At the Capitol, at publick Times, may be seen a 
great Number of handsome, well-dress'd, compleat 
Gentlemen. And at the Governor's House upon Birth- 
Nights, and at Balls and Assemblies, I have seen as 
fine an Appearance, as good Diversion, and as splendid 
Entertainments in Governor Spotzvood's Time, as I 
have seen any where else. 

" Here dwell several very good Families, and more 
reside here in their own Houses at publick Times. 

'' They live in the same neat Manner, dress after 
the same Modes, and behave themselves exactly as the 
Gentry in London; most Families of any Note having 
a Coach, Chariot, Berlin, or Chaise. 

" Thus they dwell comfortably, genteely, pleasantly, 
and plentifully in this delightful, healthful, and (I 
hope) thriving City of WilUamsburgh." ^ 

" The seat of our government had been originally 
* Hugh Jones, The Present State of Virginia, p. 25. 



Old Williamsburg- 171 

fixed in the peninsula of Jamestown, the first settle- 
ment of the colonists ; and had been afterwards re- 
moved a few miles inland to Williamsburg. But this 
was at a time when our settlements had not extended 
beyond the tide water. Now they had crossed the 
Alleghany; and the centre of population was very far 
removed from what it had been. Yet Williamsburg 
was still the depository of our archives, the habitual 
residence of the Governor and many other of the public 
functionaries, the established place for the sessions of 
the legislature, and the magazine of our military stores : 
and it's situation was so exposed that it might be taken 
at any time in war, and, at this time particularly, an 
enemy might in the night run up either of the rivers 
between which it lies, land a force above, and take 
possession of the place, without the possibility of saving 
either persons or things. I had proposed it's removal 
so early as Octob. '76. but it did not prevail until the 
session of May. '79." ^ 

This was the year 1760, the year in which 
Patrick Henry — aged twenty-four — went to Wil- 
liamsburg to be examined in the law, and narrowly 
escaped being " plucked " by the board of examiners, 
who happened to be a famous group — Peyton and 
John Randolph (attorney-general), George Wythe, 
and Robert Carter Nicholas. Jefferson had only 
lately become a matriculate. His first letter in 
Ford's edition of his voluminous correspondence — 
probably the first of the twenty-five or thirty 
thousand letters still surviving — was devoted to this 
subject. 

^ P. L. Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. i, p. 55. 



172 Georg-e Washing^ton 

"To John Harvey 

" Shadwell, Jan. 14, 1760. 
" Sir, — I was at Colo. Peter Randolph's about a 
Fortnight ago, and my Schooling falling into Dis- 
course, he said he thought it would be to my Advantage 
to go to the College, and was desirous I should go, as 
indeed I am myself for several Reasons. In the first 
place as long as I stay at the Mountains The Loss of 
one fourth of my Time is inevitable, by Company's 
coming here and detaining me from School. And like- 
wise my Absence will in a great Measure put a Stop 
to so much Company, and by that Means lessen the 
Expences of the Estate in House-Keeping. And on 
the other Hand by going to the College, I shall get a 
more universal Acquaintance, which may hereafter be 
serviceable to me ; and I suppose I can pursue my 
Studies in the Greek and Latin as well there as here, 
and likewise learn something of the Mathematics. I 
shall be glad of your opinion." ^ 

From the very beginning. Old Williamsburg had 
been wrapped in a literary and legal flavour — 
'' Devilsburg," Jefferson playfully calls it in his 
letters to John Page, in allusion to the ennui he 
suffered there, or to the tricksy pranks of the stu- 
dents, wishing *' Coke, the dull old scoundrel, at 
the devil " when the image of the fair '' Belinda " 
(Rebecca Burwell) dances teasingly before his 
imagination. The Orange and the Stuart were 
amicably wound together in the architectural cypher 
of W and M, in the shape of v/hich the elder town 

^ P. L. Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. i, p. 340. 



Old Williamsburg- 173 

had been originally laid out; its ancient library was 
full of books and MSS., presented by kings, arch- 
bishops, bishops, and scholars; the name of the 
famous Robert Boyle was inseparably connected 
with its Indian school, and generous donations were 
made to it by Government, in consideration of two 
copies of Latin verses annually prepared and pre- 
sented to it by the President and Fellows. 

Far back in the grey years of the seventeenth cen- 
tury — in 1693, when Voltaire was still unborn, and 
Racine was not far from his death-bed — the College 
cf William and Mary had been founded by a royal 
grant of twenty thousand acres of good Virginia 
land and £1985 in money, while an ample tax on to- 
bacco (the crowned weed, blazoned on the earliest 
colonial seal of Virginia), and abundant fees from 
the land-surveyor's office were added, in perpetuity, 
to maintain the president and six professors. The 
gifts and remembrances of the charitable, interested 
in Indian and colonial education, flowed into the cof- 
fers of the college, which, in 1776, had risen to be 
the richest in North America. Younger than Har- 
vard by a few months only, it soon grew to be a 
living and audacious refutation of the view of that 
choleric old *' Know Nothing," Sir William Berke- 
ley, who not long before its foundation had writ- 
ten home to London : 

" The same course is taken here, for instructing the 
people, as there is in England : Out of towns every 
man instructs his own children according to his own 



174 George Washing-ton 

ability. We have forty-eight parishes, and our minis- 
ters are well paid, and by my consent should be better, 
if they would pray oftener, and preach less. But as of 
all commodities, so of this, the worst are sent to us, and 
we have few that we can boast of, since the persecution 
in Cromwell's tyranny drove divers worthy men thither. 
Yet, I thank God, there are no free schools nor print- 
ing ; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. 
For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and 
sects, into the world, and printing has divulged them 
and libels against the best governments ; God keep us 
from both ! 

" William Berkeley. 
"Virginia, 20 June, 1671." 

Gutenberg and Faust might turn in their graves 
for all the old Governor cared, if only " Virginia, 
earth's only Paradise," as Drayton sang in his fa- 
mous ode, remained free from their '' pesky" inven- 
tion. The pink-blossomed tobacco, that waved like 
an emerald sea in and around the Virginia planta- 
tions; the hogshead of generous liquors, imported 
from vine-clad tropic islands; the skins and furs 
that clothed in velvet the thousands of shy sylvan 
creatures that roamed the Virginian woods, were to 
coin themselves into golden pence and pounds, and 
still more golden brains of men to become for ever 
celebrated in the annals of the New World. 

Old William and Mary arose, a daring incarna- 
tion of the resentment felt at the bluster of this vice- 
regal tyrant who ruled Virginia with a rod of iron, 
and wrote testy communications to the officials at 



Old Williamsburg 175 

St. James's on the "state" of the colony. Out of its 
portals, streamed in the course of time, no less than 
four hundred alumni who distinguished themselves 
in all the walks of life — three presidents of the 
United States, four signers of the Declaration, five 
Judges of the Supreme Court, sixteen United States 
senators, four speakers of the House of Representa- 
tives. The brilliant and speaking likenesses that 
graced the chapel and library walls, executed by the 
brushes of famous artists, were hardly more remark- 
able than the groups of illustrious men who, in 
silken hose and powdered hair, in cap and gown and 
velvet doublet, gathered in picture-like twos and 
threes about the shady promenades of the palace 
grounds, in the H-shaped precincts of the ancient 
House of Burgesses, or at the memorable fire- 
side conversazioni in the Apollo Room of the old 
Raleigh Tavern. 

From generation to generation old Virginia pre- 
sented herself at the Chancellor's office of William 
and Mary College, and became duly matriculated 
as the intellectual guest of " the Nestor of Ameri- 
can Colleges." Hither, George Washington came 
as a mere lad to get his land-surveyor's license, to 
be followed in a few years by Thomas Jefferson 
and Zachary Taylor (grandfather of the Presi- 
dent) on the same errand. Here, the intellect of 
John Marshall was refined to that wondrous judg- 
ment, which impelled an eminent historian ^ to 

*John Fiske. 



176 George Washington 

include him with those other Virginians — Wash- 
ington, Jefferson, Madison — among the five men 
(Hamilton being the fifth) who were the soul of 
the Revolution. Peyton Randolph, president of the 
first Continental Congress in 1774, had, doubtless, 
presided over many a boyish debate in the college 
where Lord Botetourt had established gold medals 
for Latin oratory, and prizes for attendance on 
chapel, before he assumed the august role of pre- 
siding officer of this celebrated assembly. 

Many a venerable oak on the college green, or in 
the vicinity of the quaint '' Powder Horn," or at 
the corners of what was afterwards called Lord 
Dunmore's Palace (built in the year Washington 
was born) must have rustled sympathetically in 
Dodona fashion, as the young gallants walked to 
and fro beneath them after the gorgeous balls at 
the governor's and talked " treason " of the Patrick 
Henry type, discussed the *' Writs of Assistance " 
and the impending Stamp Act, composed epigrams 
in the style of Colonel William Byrd, or trans- 
lated bits of Ovid in the fluent fashion of George 
Sandys. The unpaved streets of the venerable 
burgh would become a veritable Campo Santo of 
colonial legend, if their dust could become articulate, 
and whisper the secrets buried in the yellow sand of 
the Middle Plantation — the secrets of the *' Virginia 
Comedians " who presented there, in the primitive 
playhouse, the latest '' thing " from Vauxhall — the 
secrets that now piled themselves mountain-high 
during the administrations of Nicholson, and Spots- 



Old Williamsburg^ 177 

wood, " Knight of the Golden Horse Shoe," Gooch 
and Dinwiddie, and smiHng Botetourt and bitter- 
tongued Dunmore, who burnt himself into Vir- 
ginia's memory deeper than any other governor, 
through his devastation of Norfolk. 

This noble old Williamsburg, of high descent and 
lofty lineage, formed the jewelled clasp between the 
old and the new Virginia, between blood-stained 
Jamestown, the first capital, and civic Richmond, 
whither the capital was removed in 1779. Never, 
perhaps, in its palmiest days possessing a population 
of more than twenty-five hundred, the city of Wil- 
liam and Mary enjoys a political distinction unparal- 
leled in the history of the United States. For eighty 
years, moreover, its beaux and belles made of it the 
social " cynosure of all eyes," " the glass of fashion 
and the mould of form," a small woodland Ver- 
sailles, where a miniature court flitted hither and 
thither on its vice-regal nothings, a busybody world 
of gay triviality and harmless gossip where, between- 
whiles, Shawnees and Mingoes and Delawares are to 
be educated on Boyle's foundation (immediately to 
relapse into barbarism as soon as they returned to 
their native forests, remarks *' that merry old Vir- 
ginian," Colonel Byrd). Colonel and Mrs. Wash- 
ington and their charming children left the stately 
mansion of Mount Vernon many a time, between 
1760 and 1774, to take part in the pomp and pag- 
eantry of the vice-regal court, " step the minuet " 
in company with Fauquier, courteous Botetourt, or 
the Earl and Countess of Dunmore, or prance on 



lyS Georg-e Washing-ton 

thoroughbred horses about the Wilhamsburg lanes 
and roads, fragrant, in season, with golden mantle 
of yellow jessamine, loops and ropes of flowering 
grape, or sheets of goldenrod flinging its yellow 
dust to the wind. 

The Colonel, doubtless, kept a watchful eye on 
the fashions of the Middle Plantation gentry, ap- 
peared in his " genteel suit of superfine broadcloth," 
made the sagacious observation to his London cor- 
respondent that, *' whatever might be the reason, 
his clothes had never fitted him," no doubt made 
mental comparisons between himself and the ele- 
gantly fitted preux chevaliers of the court, and then 
proceeded to order those curious and dainty things 
for the two " Patsys," in which his circumstantial 
invoices abound. 

All this aristocracy and education of the planters' 
commonwealth were thus held, socially and politi- 
cally, together by the " jewelled clasp," for here 
assembled the hundred or so fresh-cheeked, high- 
coloured representatives of the 150,000 white Vir- 
ginians, who had then spread themselves over the 
rural infinitude called '' Virginia " ; here, a never- 
ending succession of burgesses and their wives and 
daughters gathered in the seasons of assembly, and 
contributed a brilliant society of which one catches 
piquant glimpses in Fithian's Diary; incipient 
" Sons of Liberty " began to sound their alarum- 
bells of resistance and revolution as the decades 
moved swiftly along; and hither, one day, trotted 
on his forest-bred nag a young man from Hanover 



Old Williamsburg 179 

County who, after one month's study of Coke on 
Littleton, and the Virginia Statutes, had the im- 
pudence to present himself for examination in the 
law. 

This was the kinsman of Lord Brougham, and 
Robertson the historian, Patrick Henry, an ill-clad, 
gawky, wild-eyed but genial son of the woods, of 
very definite kindred (as it seemed, afterward) but 
undefined ambition, by no means the *' Jamestown 
diamond " even his friends, at first, took him to be, 
yet unpromising in the extreme to look at. 

Four years younger than Washington, seven 
years younger than Jefferson, Henry was fre- 
quently in the latter's company, as Jefferson pur- 
sued his two years' course at the college, and, 
doubtless, often enough met Washington, when the 
Boanerges of Hanover County entered the House 
of Burgesses in 1765. 

A more illustrious triumvirate, America has 
never had to show — the Arm, the Pen, the Voice of 
the Revolution. 

The genius of a Plutarch would be required to 
characterise these three men in such lines of fire as 
they deserve. As they calmly walked the three 
quarters of a mile that covered the Duke of Glouces- 
ter Street, from the " beautiful and commodious " 
Capitol (as old Hugh Jones described it) to the 
spacious green in front of the college, discussing the 
Parson's case or Charles Townshend's Revenue 
Acts, or the constantly up-flaming Stamp Act, or 
the 20,000,000 of dollars the French and Indian 



i8o Georg-e Washington 

wars had already cost the colonies, no one could 
have predicted, that the tallest of the three young 
men would become the first man of his age, the 
second would write the document that was to be- 
come the creed and classic of all modern republics, 
and the third would incarnate the very voice of 
Revolution itself, and send it like a trail of fire from 
one end of the land to the other, never to be extin- 
guished. A vast potentiality lay latent in the three, 
for two of those unpretending burgesses were to sit 
in the presidential chair, two were to become gov- 
ernors of the commonwealth, and one was to be the 
first American Governor of Virginia elected by the 
suffrages of his fellow-citizens. The three summed 
up in themselves the essence of the whole " Ameri- 
can question," then germinating in subterranean 
ways all over the country : Jefferson the student, 
wondrously learned^ wise, discriminating, abso- 
lutely without the '' gift of gab " which his friend 
Henry possessed in such opulence, faltering and 
confused when he got up on his legs, yet even then 
in possession of that eloquence of diction, which 
made John Adams insist on his writing the Declara- 
tion of Independence; Washington, the man of 
action, strenuous, stern, falteringly modest in speech 
when he stood in legislature or congress, yet thrill- 
ing with vital force when he stood on the field of 
battle, and " swearing like an angel from Heaven " 
when things went wrong (so his friend General 
Charles Scott reported) — patient, silent, reserved, 
except when the inner volcanic flame burst through 



Old Williamsburg- i8i 

his flashing eyes in some stupendous conflict; 
Henry, the " forest-born Demosthenes," whose im- 
passioned nature had gathered up into itself all the 
sweet, wild strength of the woods and winds and 
wilderness, to break forth some day in marvellously 
musical words, and the play of a '' wonder-working 
fancy." 

And when one considers, that these were but 
three of the wonderful men who then frequented 
the goodly foundation of William and Mary, speci- 
mens of the splendid men whose souls Seymour, 
Attorney-general of Great Britain, had consigned to 
perdition, when worthy Master Blair had applied to 
him for a charter : meekly affirming that they too — 
the Virginians — had souls to save: '' Souls? souls? 

D their souls ! let them make tobacco ! " — 

when we consider that the old brick palace of 
Dunmore and the Raleigh Tavern rooms, the coun- 
cil-chamber and the college lecture-rooms, the very 
sanctuaries of old Bruton Church (built in 1700) 
and the " miniature Westminster Abbey " of the 
chapel, had resounded with the voices and presence 
of scores of such men, it is well to pause a moment, 
and remember that it was the Williamsburg spirit 
that largely ruled the Revolutionary conventions, 
that wrote the declaration of rights, that defied the 
fleets and armies of Great Britam, and that brought 
the mighty struggle to a glorious end. Yorktown 
and Williamsburg were never more than a few miles 
apart, yet in their spirit they were absolutely joined. 

It is no wonder, then, that the capitol at Williams- 



1 82 George Washington 

burg where the burgesses met was stigmatised as 
'' the heart of rebelHon," and that the foe thought 
to tear out this heart in Tarleton's time when 
American, EngHsh, and French troops successively 
occupied the beautifully laid-out grounds of the 
palace. 

Then the migrant capital moved to Richmond, 
in 1779, when Jefferson was governor, and housed 
itself in the picturesque city near the falls of the 
James, which Colonel Byrd of Westover had 
founded more than forty years before. The James, 
bursting over the foaming rocks above the lovely 
site of the present Hollywood, fitly symbolised the 
agitation of the times, while its expansion below 
into a broad and noble river, where giant battleships 
were to shoot down the launchways at busy Hamp- 
ton Roads, prophetically suggested the broadening 
currents of Virginia history, and its expansion into 
a world-influence. 

Call it a chrism, call it a curse, fire was the element 
that stuck closer than a brother to Williamsburg, 1 
from the first — fire of speech, fire of eloquence; 
fiery tongues actually seemed to hover, incandescent,^ 
over the hundred burgesses, and sting and quicken 
them into imprudent speech; and actual flames, 
crude, destructive, terrible, scourged the place 
from the year 1705 to the year 1861, when Federal 
troops burnt the venerable college buildings, and 
relic-hunters tore away the metal inscription from 
the pedestal of beloved Lord Botetourt's statue. It 
was conceived and born out of the great intellectual 




GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

From the painting by Rembrandt Peale. Reproduced by permission of C. Klackner, N. Y. 

Copyright, 1894. 



Old Williamsburg- 183 

conflagration of 1688, and it continued to burn in 
one way or another, actually or metaphorically, all 
through its history, its very ashes possessing an in- 
candescent character that flamed up anew, as soon 
as some accident (like that of the French occupation 
in 1 781) or incendiary torch had laid this or that 
one of its monumental buildings in the dust. It 
stood for the Truth, which cannot be burned, for 
Liberty, which is indestructible, for Culture, which 
can never die; for here, in 1776, originated the Phi 
Beta Kappa Society in its parent chapter, and 
straight from Williamsburg went Thomas Jefferson, 
full of his idea of founding a great State University, 
realised in 1825, by the opening of the University 
of Virginia while he was yet alive. 

Generation after generation of scholars in their 
caps and gowns, since the first commencement in 
1700, have for two hundred years streamed out of 
the portals of William and Mary College, illustrating 
every walk of life — science, law, history, literature, 
divinity, the arts; their lofty, independent spirit 
animated the debates of Congress, when a congress 
came to be; the law-books in the rich old library, 
where precious volumes shone resplendent with the 
coats-of-arms of royal governors and generous 
donors, — especially the volumes on English consti- 
tutional law, — became vitally incarnate, and were 
born to vivid resurrection in the form of Peyton 
and Edmund and John Randolph, George Wythe 
and Edmund Pendleton, Richard Bland, Robert 



184 Georg-e Washing-ton 

Carter Nicholas, Jefferson, Henry, and scores of 
others. 

In these men, the types of the Revolution reached 
their most finished mould, and stand forth, a bril- 
liant gallery of faces, unexampled for strength, 
originality, genius, and energy, only paralleled by 
the group of gladiators who, almost at this mo- 
ment, stood on the other side of the sea, like some 
marble group of monumental sculpture, and de- 
fended the same constitutional principles for which 
the Americans fought — Burke, Chatham, and Fox. 
A mighty spirit of freedom was welling up from 
the very earth in North America, and finding lips 
and voices in Massachusetts, in New York, in 
Pennsylvania, and, above all, in Virginia, whose 
warm blood had always bubbled and battled for 
freedom, and at last poured itself out freely on a 
hundred battle-fields, in defence of constitutional 
rights. 

" I have never had a will of my own," wrote 
Washington to Colonel Bouquet, '' where a duty 
was demanded of me"; and this sublime sense of 
duty actuated Washington's contemporaries almost 
to a man. The ancient charters and privileges of 
the colonies breathed the same spirit of broad hu- 
manitarianism and brotherhood, and the obligation 
to help savage and civilised alike, as far as it was 
possible to help them; and the very foundation of 
William and Mary College, and the wealth that 
flowed to it, rooted themselves in the same lofty 
philanthropies, the same recognition of the primal 



Old Williamsburg 185 

rights of man. The Indian queen, holding forth 
her twig of tobacco leaf and blossom, blazoned on 
the early colonial seal, typified not only a mighty 
gift of alleviation to mankind, but the right of a 
noble, uncivilised race to advance to the foot of the 
throne, and claim succour from an enlightened 
sovereign. 

When the gay cavalcade of the " Knights of the 
Golden Horse Shoe " trotted out of Old Williams- 
burg, under the gallant Spotswood, and climbed 
the Alleghanies, they peered over and out from their 
" peak of Darien," into the illimitable region where 
Washington later saw thousands and tens of thou- 
sands of buffalo, soon to be replaced by the millions 
of human beings, who had drawn their blood and 
culture from such institutions as this venerable 
college, and were soon to spread, like a sea, over the 
region which one of the famous trio before men- 
tioned was to gain for the United States, in 1804, 
forty years from the period under consideration; 
and over all this the benign sun of mutual recogni- 
tion, sovereign personal right, and individual con- 
science was to shine. 

Graphically has John Esten Cooke pictured the 
force and influence of this one institution, when he 
gays : 

" Almost every Virginian of any eminence in the 
eighteenth century had been trained for his work in the 
world within its walls. It gave twenty-seven of its 
students to the army in the Revolution ; two Attorney- 
Generals to the United States ; it sent out nearly twenty 



1 86 Georg-e Washing-ton 

members of Congress, fifteen United States Senators, 
seventeen Governors, thirty-seven Judges, a Lieutenant- 
General and other high officers to the army, two Com- 
modores to the navy, twelve Professors, four signers of 
the Declaration of Independence, seven Cabinet of- 
ficers, the chief draughtsman and author of the Con- 
stitution, Edmund Randolph, the most eminent of the 
Chief Justices, John Marshall, and three Presidents of 
the United States. And this list, honorable as it is, by 
no means exhausts the number of really eminent and in- 
fluential men who owed the formation and development 
of their intellects and characters to ' William and 
Mary.' In the long list of students, preserved from 
the year 1720 to the present time, will be found a great 
array of names holding a very high rank in the common- 
wealth of Virginia and the States of the South and 
West — in the pulpit, at the bar, and in the local legisla- 
tures. These, without attaining the eminence of those 
first mentioned, were the most prominent citizens of the 
communities in which they lived, and were chiefly in- 
strumental in giving character and direction to social 
and political affairs. One and all, they received from 
their education at the old ante-revolutionary college the 
stamp and mould of character which made them able 
and valuable citizens — leaders, indeed, in opinion and 
action, whenever intellect and virtue were needed for 
important public affairs." ^ 

Of the vanished life of the place, Bishop Meade 
wrote : 

" Williamsburg was once the miniature copy of the 
Court of St. James, somewhat aping the manners of 

^ Scribner's Monthly, November, 1875, P- i- 



Old Williamsburg 187 

that royal place, while the old church grave-yard and 
the college chapel were — si licet cum magnis componere 
parva — the Westminster Abbey and the St. Paul's of 
London, where the great ones were interred. The first 
person who came to sleep beneath the pavement of this 
American Westminster Abbey was Sir John Randolph, 
who had espoused the English side during the Revolu- 
tion and gone into exile ; and he was followed by his two 
sons, John Randolph, formerly the King's Attorney- 
General, and Peyton Randolph, President of the first 
Congress, and by Bishop Madison, first Bishop of Vir- 
ginia ; Chancellor Nelson, and it is believed Lord Bote- 
tourt, the royal governor, whose statue was in 1797 
placed upon the college green. Botetourt had been a 
warm friend of the Virginians and the Virginia college ; 
and, as he had expressed a desire to be buried in the 
colony, his friend, the Duke of Beaufort, wrote, after 
his death, requesting that ' the president, etc., of the 
college will permit me to erect a monument near the 
place where he was buried.' This phrase is supposed 
to indicate that the old chapel of WiUiam and Mary con- 
tained the last remains of the most popular and beloved 
of the royal governors." ^ 

The associations of the old capitol grow more 
piquant and complicated as one advances into its 
story, tangled as the original cypher-monogram of 
the plan on which it was originally laid out. 

Says Cooke : 

" Old Bruton Church was for a long time the resort 
of the students on days of public worship. At the Old 
Capitol they witnessed the determined stand made by 

"■Scrihner's Monthly, November, 1875, p. 7- 



1 88 George Washington 

the Burgesses against the encroachments of the Crown. 
At the Old Palace they appeared annually on the 5th of 
November to present their copies of Latin verses to the 
Governor, as the representative of the King of Eng- 
land, the head of the institution. At the old Raleigh 
Tavern they met to found the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 
or to join in the festivities of the fine assemblies held 
in the historic ' Apollo Room ' in the building. When 
the revolutionary outburst came, the great drama was 
played before them, and they mingled in their ' aca- 
demical dresses ' with the crowds which cheered the 
worthy Lord Botetourt as he rode in his fine chariot, 
drawn by six white horses, to the Capitol, or hooted the 
unpopular Lord Dunmore as he fled to his man-of-war 
in the river after rifling the Old Magazine of its 
powder. 

" Bruton Church, which is still standing, is one of the 
oldest of these historic buildings, and took its name 
from the parish — the college having been built, it will 
be remembered, on land ' lying and being in the parish 
of Bruton.' It was erected in 1678, and became a promi- 
nent feature of the colonial capital — a sort of miniature 
St. Paul's. The Royal Governor had his fine pew there 
under its canopy, and around him on Sunday were 
grouped the most distinguished citizens of the place, 
the Councilors, Judges, and Burgesses. The old 
Bruton Church Communion Service is still in existence. 
The cup and paten are of gold, and were presented to 
the church by Sir John Page. The flagon, chalice, and 
plate are of silver, and were presented by King George 
IIL, whose coat-of-arms is carved upon them." ^ 

The second capitol became famous after the de- 

^ Scrihner's Monthly, November, 1875, p. 10. 



Old Williamsburg- 189 

struction, by fire, of the first. Several of the scenes 
it witnessed are described by Cooke : 

" The second building soon took its place, and wit- 
nessed the tumultuous scenes of 1774 and the succeed- 
ing years. It had already echoed with the thunders of 
the great debate on the Stamp Act in 1765, when Pat- 
rick Henry, a raw countryman, startled the Burgesses 
with his grand outburst, ' Caesar had his Brutus,' etc., 
with which all are familiar. In the lobby, listening, was 
a young student of William and Mary College, named 
Thomas Jefferson, who afterward characterised the 
debate as most ' bloody,' and described the sudden 
appearance of Edmund Randolph, as he came out of the 
Chamber, declaring, with a violent oath, that he would 
have given five hundred guineas for a single vote, 
which it seems would have defeated the famous resolu- 
tions of Henry. The Old Capitol was the scene of all 
the grand official pageants of that time. The royal 
governors, always fond of imitating regal proceedings, 
had the habit of riding from the ' Palace ' to the Capitol 
in their coaches drawn by four or even six horses, aim- 
ing thus to dazzle the eyes of the ' provincials ' ; and, 
once enthroned in their Council Chamber, they seem to 
have felt that for the moment they were the real Kings 
of Virginia. The old chronicles leave no doubt of the 
lordly deportment of the royal governors on these oc- 
casions. * Yesterday, between three and four o'clock 
P.M.,' says the Virginia Gazette for May 2y, 177^, ' the 
Right Honourable the Earl of Dunmore sent a message 
to the Honourable the House of Burgesses, by the Clerk 
of the Council, requiring their immediate attendance in 
the Council Chamber, when his Excellency spoke to 
them as follows.' His address was that of Charles I. to 



I go George Washington 

his parliament, demanding the five members. The 
Burgesses had ' reflected ' on the King and Parliament, 
and were sternly declared to be ' dissolved.' And the 
men who were thus imperiously addressed, who were 
dismissed by his Lordship with marks of his cold dis- 
pleasure, as a schoolmaster dismisses his schoolboys, 
were Jefferson, Henry, Mason, and Pendleton — the 
greatest names, in a word, of the time." ^ 

Thus was old Williamsburg intertwined, like its 
own monogram, with every fibre of the ancient 
commonwealth's life, the focus and fountain of that 
life which now began to play in a dazzling stream 
of new forces, kindling, creative, illuminative, a 
measureless energy which, when turned into light, 
became a Niagara whose splendour and revelry were 
seen and heard to the ends of the earth. The era 
of the New Forces had dawned. 

^ Scribner's Monthly, November, 1875, p. 11. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NEW FORCES 

ON the 20th of September, 1765, Washington 
wrote to Francis Dandridge, his wife's uncle, 
in London : 

" At present few things are under notice of my ob- 
servation that can afford you any amusement in the 
recital. The Stamp Act, imposed on the colonies by 
the Parliament of Great Britain, engrosses the con- 
versation of the speculative part of the colonists, who 
look upon this unconstitutional method of taxation, as 
a direful attack upon their liberties, and loudly exclaim 
against the violation. What may be the result of this, 
and of some other (I think I may add) ill-judged 
measures, I will not undertake to determine; but this 
I may venture to affirm, that the advantage accruing 
to the mother country will fall greatly short of the ex- 
pectations of the ministry; for certain it is, that our 
whole substance does already in a manner flow to Great 
Britain and that whatsoever contributes to lessen our 
importations must be hurtful to their manufacturers. 
And the eyes of our people, already beginning to open, 
will perceive, that many luxuries, which we lavish our 
substance in Great Britain for, can well be dispensed 
with, whilst the necessaries of life are (mostly) to be 
had within ourselves. This, consequently, will intro- 
duce frugality, and be a necessary stimulation to in- 
dustry. If Great Britain, therefore, loads her manu- 

191 



192 George Washington 

facturies with heavy taxes, will it not facilitate these 
measures? They will not compel us, I think, to give 
our money for their exports, whether we will or not ; 
and certain I am, none of their traders will part from 
them without a valuable consideration. Where, then, 
is the utility of these restrictions? 

" As to the Stamp Act, taken in a single view, one 
and the first bad consequence attending it, I take to be 
this, our courts of judicature must inevitably be shut 
up; for it is impossible (or next of kin to it), under 
our present circumstances, that the act of Parliament 
can be complied with, were we ever so willing to en- 
force the execution ; for, not to say, which alone would 
be sufficient, that we have not money to pay the stamps, 
there are many other cogent reasons, to prevent it ; and 
if a stop be put to our judicial proceedings, I fancy the 
merchants of Great Britain, trading to the colonies, 
will not be among the last to wish for a repeal of it." ^ 

Two years later, in 1767, he wrote to Capel & Os- 
good Hanbury: 

" Unseasonable as it may be, to take any notice of 
the repeal of the Stamp Act at this time, yet I cannot 
help observing, that a contrary measure would have in- 
troduced very unhappy consequences. Those, there- 
fore, who wisely foresaw such an event, and were 
instrumental in procuring the repeal of the act, are, in 
my opinion, deservedly entitled to the thanks of the 
well-wishers to Britain and her colonies, and must re- 
flect with pleasure, that, through their means, many 
scenes of confusion and distress have been prevented. 
Mine they accordingly have, and always shall have, for 

* Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, pp. 209-210. 



The New Forces 193 

their opposition to any act of oppression ; and that act 
could be looked upon in no other light by every person, 
who would view it in its proper colors. 

" I could wish it was in my power to congratulate 
you on the success in having the commercial system of 
these colonies put upon a more enlarged and extensive 
footing, than it is ; because I am well satisfied, that it 
would ultimately redound to the advantage of the 
mother country, so long as the colonies pursue trade 
and agriculture, and would be an effectual let to manu- 
facturing among them. The money, therefore which 
they raise, would centre in Great Britain, as certainly 
as the needle will settle to the pole." ^ 

Washington to Robert Gary, 21 July, 1767: 

" The repeal of the Stamp Act, to whatsoever cause 
owing, ought much to be rejoiced at, for had the Par- 
liament of Great Britain resolved upon enforcing it, 
the consequences, I conceive, would have been more 
direful than is generally apprehended, both to the 
mother country and her colonies. All, therefore, who 
were instrumental in procuring the repeal, are entitled 
to the thanks of every British subject, and have mine 
cordially." 2 

Governor Fauquier to Earl of Halifax, June 14, 
1765: 

*' Government is set at defiance, not having strength 
enough in her hands to enforce obedience to the laws 
of the community. The private distress which every 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 210, 
note. 

^ Ibid., p. 211, note. 



194 Georg-e Washington 

man feels, increases the general dissatisfaction at the 
duties laid by the stamp act, which breaks out, and 
shews itself upon every trifling occasion." ^ 

" This engrossing topic of conversation " had, 
indeed, '' engaged all the speculative minds in the 
colonies " with a preoccupation that was never again 
to leave it. 

'' This is the way," wrote John Hughes, in Ban- 
croft,^ " that the fire began." " Virginia rang the 
alarm-bell for the continent," cried Bernard to Hali- 
fax. " Virginians fired the hearts of patriots with 
an eloquence which defied royal prerogatives and 
patronage, and set the seal of lasting pre-eminence 
on William and Mary, the venerable Nestor of 
American colleges, in which they had imbibed the 
highest principles of liberty, both of thought and of 
actions." 

" Virginia has the glory," said John Adams, 
" with posterity of beginning with the resolutions 
against the stamp act, and ending, with the acts of 
the convention of May, 1786, the great American 
Revolution." 

The Stamp Act, indeed, was but the topmost crest 
of that ocean of unrest that was now sweeping over 
the colonies. These infant commonwealths had 
grown from shiploads to plantations or settlement- 
groups, crowned and accentuated by a church spire ; 
from these to " hundreds," counties, parishes, pre- 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 210, 
note. 

* Bancroft, History of the United States, vol. v, p. 278. 



The New Forces 195 

cincts over which vestries or selectmen ruled in 
ancient English wise by free elective franchise; and 
there ensued the swift growth and amalgamation of 
disunited and ever warring units, heterogeneous be- 
yond compare, into united and harmonious wholes, 
wdiose integrity was every day becoming more dense 
and indivisible. Whatever differences of creed, of 
culture, of race, or of religion might have existed 
when the Pilgrim pioneers first set foot on American 
soil, fast obliterated themselves in the new condi- 
tions, and became as indistinguishable in the new 
life as the track of tossing and floating gulls on the 
water. Left by their careless mother sternly to 
themselves, these luckless children struck out for 
themselves, and like strong swimmers reached what- 
ever land lay next before them, in their own indi- 
vidual way. 

Even so the beehives of ancient Greece had sent 
out their swarms of bees over the busy Mediterra- 
nean, and built up thriving commonwealths, con- 
nected by the thin thread of the " metropolis " city, 
among the beautiful isles or palm-fringed shores of 
Ionia, Sicily, Corcyra, or Iberia. The thousands that 
slipped from English ports into the unknown seas 
seemed at first to have slipped into an under-world, 
unimaginably great, and dark, whence never again 
would they rise to the yearning eyes of the mother 
on the English shore. 

Here again the charming story of Alpheus and 
Arethusa was repeated; what disappeared under 
sea as sluggish Alpheus, in far-off Peloponnesus, 



196 George Washington 

reappeared in sunny Sicily as Arethusa, the spark- 
ling fountain of crystal water that suggested the 
Fountain of Perpetual Youth. The outcast children, 
self-exiled, or independent rovers as they might be, 
came to themselves on the other side of the Atlantic 
in a new and original light, and developed a type of 
which one, singling out a group of them, said : 
'' They are men, and they are noble spirits, those 
Virginians ! " 

Equally '' noble " were the men of Massachusetts, 
one of whom had uttered this honourable phrase, 
when he heard of the part played by Patrick Henry 
before the burgesses in 1765. 

This part, indeed, was merely the part now being 
played by the whole American people, by the three 
millions of American freemen who found their 
mouthpiece in the eloquent Virginian; and the true 
key-note of the situation rang out in clear tones, 
when this incarnation of spontaneous civil and in- 
tellectual freedom exclaimed, a few years later, on 
the floor of Congress : " I am not a Virginian — I 
am an American ! " an utterance as striking in its 
way as the celebrated humanitarian Homo sum of 
Terence. 

And the finest commentary on this sentiment is 
found in the almost contemporary saying of Fred- 
erick the Great : '' Kings are nothing but men, and 
all men are equal," a saying which constituted 
one drop — and that the most vital — of the com- 
plex ink out of which flowed Jefferson's master- 
piece. 



The New Forces 197 

The Age of Doubt, of scepticism in Church and 
State, of tolerance of intolerance was at hand, and 
it was strange that its gigantic forces should begin 
first to play on the sensitive organisations of the 
children of the West, those youth of the world, at 
play and at work in the huge wilderness of Canada 
and the Ohio, where the ring of the axe, not of the 
epigram, was most to be heard, and when men were, 
supposedly, busy rather in sheltering their heads than 
saving their souls. 

And yet what is more conducive to contemplative 
reverie, to the inflowing '' crafts and assaults " of 
the spirit of Mephistopheles, to the universal " spirit 
that says No!" than the limitless stretches of the 
woods, the silence and solitude of the primeval sa- 
vannah, the noiseless march of majestic rivers that 
never give an articulate answer to any question, but 
flow on for ever in monstrous fatalism, dumb, im- 
placable, silent! 

And this spirit of Mephistopheles, quickly recog- 
nised, and indelibly sculptured by Goethe into the 
massive structure of his matchless poem, was the 
actuating spirit of the century in which the United 
States were born. The mocking, scoffing, question- 
ing interrogation that trickled from the pen of Vol- 
taire, D'Alembert, Diderot, and the Encyclopedists 
was delicately etherealised by wit and humour and 
sarcasm now reflected in every face, as in the thou- 
sand bits of a shivered mirror, spread over Europe 
like a subtle atmosphere, crossed the ocean, and pen- 
etrated to the very citadel of Protestantism and the 



iq8 Georg-e Washing-ton 

Roman faith alike, in Canada and the Saxon colo- 
nies. The woodman, as his axe flashed through the 
heart of the falling oak ; the voyageur, as he shot 
down the lonely river and sang the pathetic chan- 
sons of France ; the selectman, hurrying to meeting- 
house or primitive council-hall ; the piazza politician, 
sipping his toddy, spreading his legs, and discussing 
constitutional questions on the spacious verandahs 
of open-air Virginia; even the stubborn peasant of 
Pennsylvania and the Quaker, intrenched in his 
stronghold of impregnable peace, felt the stress of 
the time and thrilled unequivocally with the sensa- 
tion of foreshadowing change. 

" Vincit qui patitur'' reads the motto of one of 
the most illustrious of the old James River families,^ 
core and centre of the English civilisation in Vir- 
ginia : '' He conquers who is patient " : a motto al- 
most ironical in its application to America at this date. 
Impatience had been from the very start the key- 
note of life in the colonies — impatience of restraint, 
impatience of royal governors and administrative 
councils, impatience of this or that impost-tax 
whether native or foreign, impatience of the slow 
and intolerable delays of leisurely legislatures, pro- 
longing or postponing salutary measures of pressing 
importance, impatience generated by the endless 
nuisances of the slowly-dragging Indian wars. Al- 
ready a noticeable feature of American life had be- 
come its quicker heart-beat, the swift and powerful 

^William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison, presi- 
dents of the United States. 



The New Forces igg 

flow of its blood in lungs and arteries, oxygenated 
by the new and pungent air of a new hemisphere. 
Up to the time of incipient Revolution — the period 
we have now reached — this impatience had taken a 
physical turn : the " Colossus of the West " was 
exercising its babyhood in muscular activities, in 
huge sprawling through the wood, in uncouth cries 
and antics of pure physical exhilaration, in battling 
defiantly against the giant forces of nature with 
which it had to contend : in marrying wives and 
getting children, — '' Go home and get children ! " 
wrote Franklin from London a little later, — build- 
ing homes, and clearing settlements. The joy of 
possession had become the supreme joy : every man 
was, so to speak, a King's tenant, paying a quit-rent 
for his land to the Crown, and ruling his log-cabin, 
his palisadoed enclosure, his farm, or his plantation 
as proudly as the barons of England ruled their cas- 
tles, or the Lords of the Loire their battlemented 
chateaux. The very abundance of the liberties they 
enjoyed had swollen the spirit of independence in 
these people of the wood to an imperious pride, pre- 
sumptuous in its attitude of fearless criticism, ready 
at a moment's notice to take offence at innovation 
or injustice, unequal in the extreme to the main- 
tenance of a mental equilibrium, in which older or 
more philosophic nations had long since settled 
down. The whole country, it might be asserted, had 
been born in a time of high temper and religious im- 
patience; and this birthmark, once stamped upon 



200 George Washington 

the intellectual features of the land, became its 
motto, crest, and coat-of-arms. 

The moment had now come when this physical 
restlessness was, by some subtle alchemy, to trans- 
mute itself into an intellectual inquisitiveness, petu- 
lance, almost intolerance, which incarnated itself in 
committees of correspondence, political clubs, legis- 
lative bodies, and revolutionary assemblies. Little 
connected discourse had, so to speak, written itself 
down in America up to this time. The beginnings of 
a promising literature had, indeed, begun to sparkle 
casually in the writings of Franklin, Colonel Wil- 
liam Byrd, Governor Hutchinson, and Jonathan Ed- 
wards. But, on the whole, the inner spiritual forces 
at work, in the fashion of undertow drifting hither 
and thither, had not yet sufficiently saturated the 
subtle intelligence of the West to impel them irre- 
sistibly to speak. In pamphlets alone, — in broad- 
sides, sheets of flame, and leaflets buoyant as thistle- 
down floating here and there, intangible yet incan- 
descent, in newspaper paragraphs or cutting couplets 
— did the anger, the discontent, or the buffoonery 
of the hour, find a fitful vent. 

The year 1763 became the crucial year, the year 
of concentration, for all the flotsam and jetsam of 
new forces that had risen to the top, between the 
parallels of 31 and 45 degrees north. In this mem- 
orable year, the Treaty of Paris between England 
and France — between the third George and the fif- 
teenth Louis — had thrown open the gates of almost 
the entire North American Continent, east of the 



The New Forces 201 

Mississippi, to the Anglo-Saxon race. Scarcely a rag 
of French influence hung on the mighty parallel 
of longitude that swept from the Arctic Circle to the 
Gulf of Mexico; scarcely a petal of the lovely fleur- 
de-lis was left to bloom and to star the soil between 
Quebec and New Orleans, the memorial plant of 
those cultured Bourbons who saw, in its spread and 
growth, suggestions of their symbolic sovereignty. 
Almost all was now English in the mighty world 
over which both had battled so long and so stoutly, 
decided, once for all, by the tragic conflict that had 
for ever ennobled and ensanguined the Heights of 
Abraham. In Montcalm, the fleur-de-lis exhaled its 
supreme sigh; in Wolfe, the rose, watered with the 
blood of heroes, burned with a fiercer crimson than 
ever, and struck root, deep and inviolable, in a soil 
from which it was never to be eradicated. 

Joyous as might be the hymns of thanksgiving 
which saluted, with their acclaim, the lifting up of 
the everlasting gates that the King of England 
might enter in, the deed was fraught with direful 
consequences to the Crown. The single act of far- 
spreading sovereignty over the New World, consti- 
tuting the essence of the treaty, had, in its heart of 
hearts, seeds of disaster and dissolution for the Brit- 
ish Empire in America, never suspected by the dip- 
lomats who drew it up. It threw into the power of 
England realms of such vastness, responsibilities so 
searching, breadth and variety of interests so great, 
that the assembled wisdom of the five hundred and 
fifty-eight members of the House of Commons, and 



202 Georg-e Washing-ton 

the collective dignity of the historic House of Lords, 
were called upon at once to devise ways and means 
of governing this world-empire, whose edges alone, 
quivering with intelligence, already engaged the 
most earnest efforts of ministry and premier, tact- 
fully to manage. 

The enormous budgets of the twentieth century, 
in which hundreds of millions of dollars produce 
only the stereotyped annual stare, might well laugh 
to scorn the bagatelle of $70,000,000 then required 
to " run the government " ; but this for the time was 
a colossal sum, and how was it to be raised ? 
'' France," cried Walpole in one of his animated let- 
ters, '' has allowed us to undo ourselves " ; her su- 
preme generosity in the " affair of 1763 " was the 
historic exemplification of the coarse proverb, '' O 
give her rope enough and she will hang herself." 

For a hundred years and more, the twenty differ- 
ent kinds of governments in America had been un- 
tiringly working, consciously or unconsciously, on 
the problem of enlarging the empire, extending the 
boundaries of colonial rule, planting the cross of St. 
George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick over every blade 
of grass that sprang from Plymouth and Jamestown, 
to the great river that cleft the continent in twain. 
But so gradually had the terms of this problem 
worked themselves out, so imperceptibly had pos- 
session, conquest, settlement, organisation grown, 
that the colonies had had time to take breath, to find 
themselves amid their new wealth, to raise revenues 
for the support of the Government, and generally, 



The New Forces 203 

to accommodate themselves easily to the increasing 
pomp and circumstance of territorial expansion. 

But, all of a sudden, the scratch of a pen had made 
England responsible for half a continent filled with 
warring hordes of savages " dressed like sorcerers," 
as Chateaubriand complained, hordes kept in con- 
tinual ferment by the machinations of French and 
Spanish Jesuits, a fringe of human beings clinging 
with barbarous purpose to the rights of the forest, 
and defending these rights valiantly in the person 
of the Pontiacs, the '' Cornstalks," the Logans, who 
fitfully rose among them. 

The concessions of France turned out to be a 
stroke of misunderstood but disconcerting diplo- 
macy. Through the haze of a century and a half, 
one can see the smile of bewitching grace with which 
the " viper's tgg " (in Walpole's words) was handed 
over to the representatives of Downing Street, 
quickly to hatch out its brood of Stamp Acts, Navi- 
gation Acts, tea tyrannies, and, arbitrary legislation, 
directly traceable to the heroic blood spilt on the 
Heights of Abraham. 

For, infallibly as the effect flows out of the cause, 
was the American Revolution one of the greater 
births that emerged from the Treaty of Paris. How 
guard all this immense territory? How defend the 
measureless frontier from the fierce and ever-multi- 
plying Indian tomahawks? How must the expense 
of a colonial system, continually flowing outward 
like the rings of effluent water into which one has 
thrown a gigantic stone, be met? Where was all 



204 George Washington 

this extravagance of cession, of conquest, of posses- 
sion to stop ? 

Revenue acts for America must be planned ; stand- 
ing armies must be instituted for the transatlantic 
provinces, and these armies must be supported by 
the people whom they protected; the sacredness of 
American homes, hitherto free from domiciliary or 
any other kind of unwelcome visitor, must reveal its 
inmost secrets to a foreign soldiery billeted upon 
them; the Navigation Law must be enforced, and 
this, that, and the other obsolete statute revived, and 
every goose be squeezed to yield its golden egg. 

The most stinging of all these propositions was 
perhaps the enforcement of the Navigation Act ; the 
most maddening, the proposition to rivet a standing 
army on the colonies of free men accustomed to do 
their own soldiering. " I always," said John Adams, 
" consider the settlement of America with reverence 
and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and 
design in Providence for the illumination of the 
ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part 
of mankind all over the earth." 

Advancing into the wilderness with Bible, Book 
of Common Prayer, Catechism, and Charter, the 
four corner-stones of the quadrangle of common- 
wealth life, they had founded there numerous estab- 
lishments which, in their way, were models of free 
and noble institutions, based upon a constitution 
running straight to Runnymede. 

" Emancipation " had been the dominant chord 
of the whole movement from island to continent, the 



The New Forces 205 

secret of the plunge into the great deep, the mystery 
of embarcation for unknown lands in crazy caravels 
that scarce held bottom, till old-world nostrils sniffed 
the fragrances floating off-shore from the " Summer 
Isles." It was as if the ancient Mother held between 
her lips a magic pipe and blew from it, from time to 
time, painted bubbles that wafted themselves over 
sea in obedience to her command : " Go my children : 
make homes for yourselves " ; and there settling, 
transformed themselves from bubbles into substan- 
tial commonwealths, with more or less of the ra- 
diancy of their origin hanging about them. 

And now the proposition to catch all these way- 
ward children in the drag-net of iron dependence 
again, and subject them, willy-nilly, to post-duties 
and internal taxes, to prohibitions on free trade and 
commerce with the outside world, even to restric- 
tions on food, clothing, the printing press, and the 
things that make life joyous and tolerable — the mad 
purpose of the mother, to make the full-grown boy 
a babe again, raised first eyebrows of incredulity, 
then inflated nostrils with indignation, curled lips 
with contempt, and, finally, lifted the parricidal hand 
which was to sever, once and for ever, the umbilical 
cord that bound infant and parent vitally together. 

" American independence, like the great rivers of the 
country, had many sources ; but the head-spring which 
colored all the stream was the Navigation Act. 

" Reverence for the colonial mercantile system was 
branded into Grenville's mind as deeply and inef- 
faceably as ever the superstition of witchcraft into a 



2o6 George Washing-ton 

credulous and child-like nature. It was his ' idol ' ; 
and he adored it as ' sacred.' He held that ' Colonies 
are only settlements made in distant parts of the world 
for the improvement of trade ; that they would be in- 
tolerable except on the conditions contained in the Act 
of Navigation ; that those who, from the increase of 
contraband, had apprehensions that they may break off 
their connection with the mother country, saw not half 
the evil ; that wherever the Acts of Navigation are dis- 
regarded, the connection is actually broken already.' 
Nor did this monopoly seem to him a wrong; he 
claimed for England the exclusive trade with its 
colonies as the exercise of an indisputable right which 
every state, in exclusion of all others, has to the ser- 
vices of its own subjects. His indefatigable zeal could 
never be satisfied. 

'' All officers of the customs in the colonies were 
ordered to their posts ; their numbers were increased ; 
they were provided with ' new and ample instructions 
enforcing in the strongest manner the strictest atten- 
tion to their duty ' ; every officer that failed or 
faltered was instantly to be dismissed. 

'' Nor did Grenville fail to perceive that ' the re- 
straint and suppression of practices which had long 
prevailed, would certainly encountei* great difficulties 
in such distant parts of the king's dominions ' ; the 
whole force of the royal authority was therefore in- 
voked in aid. The Governors were to make the 
suppression of the forbidden trade with foreign nations 
the constant and immediate object of their care. All 
officers, both civil, and military, and naval, in America 
and the West Indies, were to give their co-operation. 
' We depend,' said a memorial from the treasury, ' upon 



The New Forces 207 

the sea-guard as the Hkeliest means for accomplishing 
these great purposes/ and that sea-guard was to be 
extended and strengthened as far as the naval estab- 
lishments would allow. To complete the whole, and 
this was a favorite part of Grenville's scheme, a new 
and uniform system of Courts of Admiralty was to be 
established. On the very next day after this mjemorial 
was presented, the king himself in council gave his 
sanction to the whole system. 

'' Forthwith orders were issued directly to the Com- 
mander-in-chief in America that the troops under his 
command should give their assistance to the officers 
of the revenue for the effectual suppression of contra- 
band trade. 

" Nor was there delay in following up the new law 
to employ the navy to enforce the Navigation Acts. 
To this end Admiral Colville, the naval Commander- 
in-chief on the coasts of North America, from the river 
St. Lawrence to Cape Florida and the Bahama Islands, 
became the head of a new corps of revenue officers. 
Each captain of his squadron had custom-house com- 
missions and a set of instructions from the Lords Com- 
missioners of the Admiralty for his guidance ; and 
other instructions were given them by the Admiral to 
enter the harbors or lie off the coasts of America ; to 
qualify themselves by taking the usual custom-house 
oaths to do the office of custom-house officers ; to seize 
such persons as were suspected by them to be engaged 
in illicit trade. 

'* The promise of large emoluments in case of for- 
feitures stimulated their natural and irregular vivacity 
to enforce laws which had become obsolete, and they 
pounced upon American property as they would have 



2o8 George Washington 

gone in war in quest of prize-money. Even at first 
their acts were equivocal, and they soon came to be as 
illegal as they were oppressive. There was no redress. 
An appeal to the Privy Council was costly and difficult, 
and besides, when as happened before the end of the 
year, an officer had to defend himself on an appeal, 
the suffering colonists were exhausted by the delay and 
expenses, while the treasury took care to indemnify 
their agent." ^ 

The enforcement of this act, which was designed 
to prevent the colonies from trading with any other 
country than England, at once changed the entire 
British Navy, stationed in American waters, into an 
armed police scouring the seas for smugglers, and 
seizing everything but iron, rice, lumber, and a few 
other articles as a kind of contraband. 

The Navigation Acts were already more or less 
definitely in operation, — an effective styptic to the 
expansion of American trade except with Britain; 
and Yankee wits had for generations been won- 
drously quickened to circumvent them, converting 
the Gulf Stream, so to speak, into a battle-ground of 
smuggling and buccaneering where endless dramas 
of romance and adventure were played. 

But these oppressive Acts, repugnant to every 
dictate of common sense and reason, even of com- 
mon justice and decency, were now to be reinforced 
by another act of oppression, symbolically repre- 
sented by a thin piece of blue paper blazoned with 
lions rampant of Great Britain. This image of the 

^ Bancroft, History of the United States, vol. v, pp. 159-162. 




o Q 
id 

< >, 



CO p. 

i 2 



The New Forces 209 

battling lions — ruefully symbolic as the issue turned 
out — was to be attached to every important legal 
paper — marriage contracts were not exempt — that 
concerned itself with the main issues of trade and 
commerce, of life and death in the colonies. It was 
an unhappy measure, devised by the ingenuity of 
statesmen at their wits' ends to meet the enormous 
consequences of colonial expansion imbedded in the 
splendid victory of Quebec. The mimic parliaments 
that had sprung up on the James, in Massachusetts 
Bay, at Charleston, Annapolis, Philadelphia, and Al- 
bany, were close and truthful imitations of the great 
legislative body that met at St. Stephen's, West- 
minster, and transacted business in which every free 
man delighted to take part. Free speech, free press, 
the right of free discussion, the right of appeal to the 
supreme tribunal, above all, the right to tax them- 
selves, had been from time immemorial the govern- 
ing principles of these legislative bodies, parent and 
children alike. 

It had been the pride and the joy of the younger 
commonwealths to copy, not only the ancient forms, 
but the fresh and immortal spirit of English legis- 
lation, whose history and decisions were as familiar 
on the James as on the Thames. 

At one fell stroke — in February, 1765 — all this 
was changed by one of those acts of concentrated 
folly with which parliaments and congresses alike 
occasionally startle the world. 

" From the days of King William there was a steady 
line of precedents of opinion that America should, like 



2IO Georg-e Washington 

Ireland, provide in whole, or at least in part, for the 
support of its military establishment. It was one of 
the first subjects of consideration on the organization 
of the Board of Trade. It again employed the attention 
of the servants of Queen Anne. It was still more 
seriously considered in the days of George the First; 
and when, in the reign of George the Second, the Duke 
of Cumberland was at the head of American military 
affairs, it was laid down as a principle, that a revenue 
sufficient for the purpose must be provided. The min- 
istry of Bute resolved to provide such a revenue ; for 
which Charles Townshend pledged the government. 
Parliament wished it. The king wished it. Almost 
all sorts and conditions of men repeatedly wished it. 

'' How America was to be compelled to contribute 
this revenue remained a question. For half a century 
or more, the king had sent executive orders or requisi- 
tions. But if requisitions were made, the colonial legis- 
lature claimed a right of freely deliberating upon them ; 
and as the colonies were divided into nearly twenty 
different governments, it was held that they never 
would come to a common result. The need of some 
principle of union, of some central power was asserted. 
To give the military chief a dictatorial authority to re- 
quire subsistence for the army, was suggested by the 
Board of Trade in 1696, in the days of King William 
and of Locke; was more deliberately planned in 1721 ; 
was apparently favored by Cumberland, and was one 
of the arbitrary proposals put aside by Pitt. To claim 
the revenue through a congress of the colonies, was 
at one time the plan of Halifax ; but if the congress 
was of governors, their decision would be only con- 
sultatory, and have no more weight than royal instruc- 



The New Forces 211 

tions ; and if the congress was a representative body, 
it would claim and exercise the right of free discussion. 
To demand a revenue by instruction from the king, 
and to enforce them by stringent coercive measures, was 
beyond the power of the prerogative, under the system 
established at the revolution. When New York had 
failed to make appropriations for the civil service, a bill 
was prepared to be laid before Parliament, giving the 
usual revenue ; and this bill having received the appro- 
bation of the great whig lawyers, Northey and Ray- 
mond, was the precedent which overcame Grenville's 
scruples about taxing the colonies without first allow- 
ing them representatives. It was settled then that there 
must be a military establishment in America of twenty 
regiments ; that after the first year its expenses must 
be defrayed by America ; that the American colonies 
themselves, with their various charters, never would 
agree to vote such a revenue, and that Parliament must 
do it. 

" It remained to consider what tax Parliament 
should impose. And here all agreed that the first 
object of taxation was foreign and intercolonial com- 
merce. But that, under the navigation acts, would not 
produce enough. A poll tax was common in America ; 
but, applied by Parliament, would fall unequally upon 
the colonies holding slaves. The difficulty in collecting 
quit-rents, proved that a land tax would meet with 
formidable obstacles. An excise was thought of, but 
kept in reserve. An issue of exchequer bills to be kept 
in circulation as the currency of the continent, was 
urged on the ministry, but conflicted with the policy 
of acts of parliament against the use of paper money in 
the colonies. Everybody who reasoned on the subject, 



212 Georg-e Washing-ton 

decided for a stamp act, as certain of collection ; and in 
America, where lawsuits were frequent, as likely to be 
very productive. A stamp act had been proposed to 
Sir Robert Walpole ; it had been thought of by Pelham ; 
it had been almost resolved upon in 1755 ; it had been 
pressed upon Pitt; it seems beyond a doubt to have 
been a part of the system adopted in the ministry of 
Bute, and was sure of the support of Charles 
Townshend. 

" Knox, the agent of Georgia, stood ready to defend 
the stamp act, as least liable to objection. The agent 
of Massachusetts, through his brother, Israel Mauduit, 
who had Jenkinson for his fast friend and often saw 
Grenville, favored raising the wanted money in that 
way, because it would occasion less expense of officers, 
and would include the West India Islands ; and speak- 
ing for his constituents, he made a merit of cheerful 
' submission ' to the ministerial policy. 

" One man in Grenville's office, and one man only, 
did indeed give him sound advice ; Richard Jackson, 
his Secretary as Chancellor of the Exchequer, advised 
him to lay the project aside, and refused to take any 
part in preparing or supporting it. But Jenkinson, his 
Secretary of the Treasury, was ready to render every 
assistance, and weighed more than the honest and in- 
dependent Jackson. 

" Grenville therefore adopted the measure which was 
' devolved upon him,' and his memory must consent, 
as he himself consented, that it should be ' christened 
by his name.' It was certainly Grenville, * who first 
brought this scheme into form.' He doubted the pro- 
priety of taxing colonies, without allowing them repre- 
sentatives ; but he loved power, and placed his chief 



The New Forces 213 

hopes on the favour of parliament ; and the parHament 
of that day contemplated the increased debt of England 
with terror, knew not that the resources of the country 
were increasing in a still greater proportion, and insisted 
on throwing a part of the public burdens upon 
America." ^ 

Thus the cockatrice's Qgg was hatched. 

^ Bancroft, History of the United States, vol. v, pp. 152-156. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE cockatrice's EGG 

NINETEEN years before the eighteenth century 
expired, an accomplished old man, half dandy, 
half diplomat, sat at his exquisitely carved secretary 
in the famous house at Strawberry Hill, and penned 
the following retrospective lines to Sir Horace 
Mann: 

" From the hour that fatal tgg, the Stamp Act, was 
laid, I disliked it and all the vipers hatched from it. 
I now hear many curse it, who fed the vermin with 
poisonous weeds. Yet the guilty and the innocent rue 
it equally hitherto ! I would not answer for what is to 
come ! Seven years of miscarriages may sour the 
sweetest tempers, and the most sweetened. Oh ! where 
is the Dove with the olive-branch? Long ago I told 
you that you and I might not live to see an end of the 
American war. It is very near its end indeed now — 
its consequences are far from a conclusion. In some 
respects, they are commencing a new date, which will 
reach far beyond us. I desire not to pry into that book 
of futurity. Could I finish my course in peace — but 
one must take the chequered scenes of life as they come. 
What signifies whether the elements are serene or 
turbulent, when a private old man slips away? What 
has he and the world's concerns to do with one another? 
He may sigh for his country, and babble about it ; but 

214 



The Cockatrice's Eg-g 215 

he might as well sit quiet and read or tell old stories ; 
the past is as important to him as the future." ^ 

It required just ten years — 1765- 1775 — to hatch 
out the viper's egg, and among the myriad of lively 
young consequences that crept out of it were a seven 
years' war, a debt of £70,000,000 (according to 
Edmund Burke), the extinction of 100,000 precious 
lives, and the loss of what ultimately proved to be 
3,000,000 square miles of territory. 

Again Virginia was in that beautiful May time 
(so dear to Chaucer and to all true Englishmen), 
during which the Jamestown Fathers had first looked 
out and beheld the enchanted shores of Hampton 
Roads; the rich summer was advancing; the bur- 
gesses at old Williamsburg, having been in session 
some time, were about to adjourn, and soon the 
midsummer calm of halcyon silence from their 
wordy presence would fall like a benediction over 
capitol and palace, when a young man (it was his 
birthday) rose in place, and, taking out of his pocket 
a sheet of paper torn from an old law-book, read the 
following preamble and " resolves " : 

" Whereas, the honorable house of commons in Eng- 
land have of late drawn into question how far the 
general assembly of this colony hath power to enact 
laws for laying of taxes and imposing duties, payable 
by the people of this, his majesty's most ancient colony : 
for settling and ascertaining the same to all future 
times, the house of burgesses of this present general 
assembly have come to the following resolves : — 

^Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. ii, p. 247. 



2i6 Georg-e Washington 

" I. Resolved, That the first adventurers and set- 
tlers of this, his majesty's colony and dominion, 
brought with them and transmitted to their posterity, 
and all other his majesty's subjects, since inhabiting 
in this, his majesty's said colony, all the privileges, 
franchises, and immunities that have at any time been 
held, enjoyed, and possessed, by the people of Great 
Britain. 

" 2. Resolved, That by two royal charters, granted 
by king James the First, the colonists aforesaid are 
declared entitled to all the privileges, liberties, and im- 
munities of denizens and natural born subjects, to all 
intents and purposes, as if they had been abiding and 
born within the realm of England. 

" 3, Resolved, That the taxation of the people by 
themselves or by persons chosen by themselves to repre- 
sent them, who can only know what taxes the people 
are able to bear, and the easiest mode of raising them, 
and are equally affected by such taxes themselves, is 
the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom, 
and without which the ancient constitution cannot 
subsist. 

" 4. Resolved, That his majesty's liege people of 
this most ancient colony have uninterruptedly enjoyed 
the right of being thus governed by their own assembly 
in the article of their taxes, and internal police, and 
that the same hath never been forfeited, or any other 
way given up, but hath been constantly recognised by 
the kings and people of Great Britain. 

'' 5. Resolved, therefore. That the general assembly 
of this colony have the only and sole exclusive right 
and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the in- 
habitants of this colony ; and that every attempt to vest 



The Cockatrice's Eg-g- 217 

such power in any person or persons whatsoever, other 
than the general assembly aforesaid, has a manifest 
tendency to destroy British as well as American 
freedom. 

"6. Resolved, That his majesty's liege people, the 
inhabitants of this colony, are not bound to yield obe- 
dience to any law or ordinance whatever, designed to 
impose any taxation whatsoever upon them, other than 
the laws or ordinances of the general assembly afore- 
said. 

" 7. Resolved, That any person who shall, by speak- 
ing or writing, assert or maintain that any person or 
persons, other than the general assembly of this colony, 
have any right or power to impose or lay any taxation 
on the people here, shall be deemed an enemy to his 
majesty's colony." 

" No reader will find it hard to accept Jefferson's 
statement that the debate on these resolutions was 
' most bloody.' ' They were opposed by Randolph, 
Bland, Pendleton, Nicholas, Wythe, and all the old 
members, whose influence in the house had till then 
been unbroken.' There was every reason, whether of 
public policy or of private feeling, why the old party 
leaders in the House should now bestir themselves, and 
combine, and put forth all their powers in debate, to 
check, and if possible to rout and extinguish this self- 
conceited but most dangerous young man. ' Many 
threats were uttered, and much abuse cast on him,' said 
Patrick himself, long afterward. Logic, learning, 
eloquence, denunciation, derision, intimidation, were 
poured from all sides of the House upon the head of 
the presumptuous intruder ; but alone, or almost alone, 
he confronted, and defeated all his assailants. 



2i8 Georg-e Washing-ton 

' Torrents of sublime eloquence from Mr. Henry, 
backed by the solid reasoning of Johnston, prevailed.' 
" It was sometime in the course of this tremendous 
fight, extending through the 29th and 30th of May, 
that the incident occurred which has long been familiar 
among the anecdotes of the Revolution, and which may 
be here recalled as a reminiscence, not only of his own 
consummate mastery of the situation, but of a most 
dramatic scene in an epoch-making debate. Reaching 
the climax of a passage of fearful invective, on the 
injustice and the impolicy of the Stamp Act, he said 
in tones of thrilling solemnity, ' Caesar had his Brutus ; 
Charles the First, his Cromwell ; and George the Third 
[' Treason,' shouted the speaker. ' Treason,' ' treason,' 
rose from all sides of the room. The orator paused in 
stately defiance till these rude exclamations were 
ended, and then, rearing himself with a look and bear- 
ing of still prouder and fiercer determination, he so 
closed the sentence as to baffle his accusers, without 
in the least flinching from his position,] — and George 
the Third may profit by their example. If this be 
treason, make the most of it.' " ^ 

The young man's voice was wonderfully sweet 
and flexible and grew in majesty and power as he 
read on, occasionally lifting an eye full of expression, 
then kindling with '* a great flame of dauntless pur- 
pose " as he pursued his reading to the end. 

Agitation betrayed itself on every countenance, 
as the young upstart from Louisa wound his way, 
at first with embarrassment, then with incompa- 
rable ease and power, through the weighty labyrinth 

^ Tyler, Patrick Henry, pp. 61-64. 



A 

BOOK of .PURVEYS 




"'^^^^ 



e>/v 



SURVEYOR'S MANUSCRIPT. 
From Washington's "Book of Surveys." 



The Cockatrice's Egg 219 

of principles and statements slowly unfolding itself 
from the paper in his hand. Men looked at each 
other in amazement; annoyance, indignation, wrath 
flashed out of eyes long accustomed to rule in that 
historic assembly, answered by smiles of jubilant 
surprise, ecstasy, delight from others on whom " the 
day Star of the Revolution " now rose for the first 
time. There were grey-haired constitutional law- 
yers — Randolph, the Attorney-general, John Robin- 
son, Speaker of the House, four of the incipient 
signers of the Declaration, the president of the first 
Continental Congress (to be), Wythe, the eminent 
Chancellor (afterwards poisoned by his nephew). 
Bland, Nicholas, Johnston, Fleming (to whom the 
'' Resolves " were afterwards strangely attrib- 
uted by Jefferson), possibly Colonel Washington 
himself; a throng of distinguished men skilled in 
debate, grown grey in the service of their country, 
not one of whom had as yet publicly spoken on the 
great question burning in the hearts of all. 

Attention riveted itself on the member from 
Louisa : imperceptibly, memory began to work here 
and there, members began to recall a certain " to- 
bacco question " which had agitated the whole 
colony three years before, in which this very man 
(aged twenty-seven) had taken central part. 

This was the famous Parsons' Case, and the man 
was — Patrick Henry. 

In this case, remarkable for the turn things had 
taken, the young advocate, hardly familiar with the 
forms of law itself, had been on the wrong side, on 



220 Georg-e Washington 

the side of repudiation of a solemn obligation entered 
into by the vestries to pay their rectors in pounds 
of tobacco, not in pennies of depreciated paper; yet 
such was the power of his oratory, his thrilling de- 
nunciations of interference by the Crown in local 
legislation, his gift of persuasion and of quick and 
fluent imagination, that judge and jury alike were 
overwhelmed, the decision in favour of the parsons 
(virtually all the ghostly advisers in Virginia) was 
instantly reversed, twenty of the most learned clergy 
of the commonwealth present fled pell-mell from 
their seats, and a verdict of one penny damages 
against the Rev. James Maury et al. was brought in 
without delay. 

It was in this speech that the audacious orator 
had first used the word " tyrant " as applicable to 
a ruler who would trample under foot ancient char- 
ters and constitutional guarantees, and that the 
alliterative response " treason " darted from the 
lips of bystanders still loyal to the House of Han- 
over. 

As this tide of memories and associations flowed 
into the consciousness of the burgesses, as they sat 
around, from Mr. Speaker to the humblest repre- 
sentative of forest and mountain, the situation 
cleared : men stared, at first aghast, then with 
gesture of antagonism or assent ; at last things came 
to a crisis : men voted. 

" Ayes 20; noes 19," rang out in clear tones from 
the clerk's desk. The celebrated " Virginia Reso- 
lutions " were a part of history. 



Th€ Cockatrice's Egg 221 

" Upon this final discomfiture of the old leaders, 
one of their number, Peyton Randolph, swept angrily 
out of the House, and brushing past young Thomas 
Jefferson, who was standing in the door of the lobby, 
he swore, with a great oath, that he ' would have 
given five hundred guineas for a single vote.' " ^ 

When he was a very old man, almost at the close 
of his career, Henry gave the following authentic 
account of this celebrated transaction : 

'* The within resolutions passed the house of bur- 
gesses in May, 1765. They formed the first opposition 
to the Stamp Act, and the scheme of taxing America 
by the British parliament. All the colonies, either 
through fear, or want of opportunity to form an opposi- 
tion, or from influence of some kind or other, had re- 
mained silent. I had been for the first time elected 
a burgess a few days before ; was young, inexperienced, 
unacquainted with the forms of the house, and the 
members that composed it. Finding the men of weight 
averse to opposition, and the commencement of the tax 
at hand, and that no person was likely to step forth, 
I determined to venture ; and alone, unadvised, and 
unassisted, on a blank leaf of an old law book, wrote 
the within. Upon offering them to the house, violent 
debates ensued. Many threats were uttered, and much 
abuse cast on me by the party for submission. After 
a long and warm contest, the resolutions passed by a 
very small majority, perhaps of one or two only. The 
alarm spread throughout America with astonishing 
quickness, and the ministerial party were overwhelmed. 
The great point of resistance to British taxation was 

* Tyler, Patrick Henry, p. 66. 



222 Georg-e Washington 

universally established in the colonies. This brought 
on the war, which finally separated the two countries, 
and gave independence to ours. 

" Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse, will 
depend upon the use our people make of the blessings 
which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they 
are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of 
a contrary character, they will be miserable. Right- 
eousness alone can exalt them as a nation. 

" Reader ! whoever thou art, remember this ; and in 
thy sphere practise virtue thyself, and encourage it in 
others. 

" P. Henry." ^ 

" As the historic importance of the Virginia resolu- 
tions became more and more apparent, a disposition 
was manifested to deny to Patrick Henry the honour 
of having written them. As early as 1790, Madison, 
between whom and Henry there was nearly always a 
sharp hostility, significantly asked Edmund Pendleton 
to tell him * where the resolutions proposed by Mr. 
Henry really originated.' " ^ 

Edmund Randolph is said to have asserted that 
they were written by William Fleming; a statement 
of which Jefferson remarked, '' It is to me incom- 
prehensible." But to Jefferson's own testimony on 
the same subject, I would apply the same remark. 
In his Memorandum, he says without hesitation that 
the resolutions ** were drawn up by George Johns- 
ton, a lawyer of the Northern Neck, a very able, 

* Tyler, Patrick Henry, p. 75. 

^Letters and Other Writings of Madison, vol. i, p. 515. 



The Cockatrice's Eg-g- 223 

logical, and correct speaker." ^ But in another 
paper, written at about the same time, Jefferson 
said: '' I can readily enough believe these resolutions 
were written by Mr. Henry himself. They bear 
the stamp of his mind, strong without precision. 
That they were written by Johnston, who seconded 
them, was only the rumor of the day, and very 
possibly unfounded." In the face of all this tissue 
of rumour, guesswork, and self-contradiction, the 
deliberate statement of Patrick Henry himself, that 
he wrote the seven resolutions referred to by him, 
and that he wrote them '' alone, unadvised, and un- 
assisted," must close the discussion. ^ 

This places in an undoubted light not only the 
authorship of the " Resolves " but certain accom- 
panying details picturesquely clinging to these 
passages. 

Of extreme importance for our immediate pur- 
pose is a small group of Washington letters, 
running from 1767 to the beginning of the Revolu- 
tion, showing the growth of opinion on this taxa- 
tion question in the mind of the most illustrious 
figure and actor in it. Incidentally, too, these letters 
show vividly the kind of correspondence then pass- 
ing from week to week among Virginia gentlemen 
of the ruling class, alive to the needs of the day, 
the situation of matters in England, the trend of 
public opinion on subjects vitally affecting the 

^ Hist. Mag. for 1867, p. 91. 

^ Tyler, Patrick Henry, p. 75, note. 



224 Georg-e Washing-ton 

colonies. Washington was never passionate nor 
partisan; the ardour of his mind usually expressed 
itself in acts, not in words; but one cannot read this 
striking group of opinions and reflections on the 
drift of things in America, in the decade under dis- 
cussion, without feeling the increasing purpose, the 
deep and concentrated feeling, the surge and swell 
of an anger which at last, repressed with admirable 
self-control for ten years, burst all bounds and con- 
verted this man and thousands of his countrymen 
from rank royalists to rank republicans, from Eng- 
lishmen bred in the bone, to rebels, revolutionists, 
Americans. 

Autobiographically remodelled, these letters 
might well be entitled : " How I Became a Rebel." 

" To George Mason 

" Mount Vernon, 5 April, 1769. 
" Dear Sir, 

" Herewith you will receive a letter and sundry 
papers, which were forwarded to me a day or two ago 
by Dr. Ross of Bladensburg. I transmit them with the 
greater pleasure, as my own desire of knowing your 
sentiments upon a matter of this importance exactly 
coincides with the Doctor's inclinations. 

*' At a time, when our lordly masters in Great 
Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the 
deprivation of American freedom, it seems highly 
necessary that something should be done to avert the 
stroke, and maintain the liberty, which we have de- 
rived from our ancestors. But the manner of doing 



The Cockatrice's Egg 225 

it, to answer the purpose effectually, is the point in 
question. 

'' That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment, 
to use a — ms in defence of so valuable a blessing, on 
which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly 
my opinion. Yet a — ms I would beg leave to add, 
should be the last resource, the dernier resort. Ad- 
dresses to the throne, and remonstrances to Parliament, 
we have already, it is said, proved the inefficacy of. 
How far, then, their attention to our rights and privi- 
liges is to be awakened or alarmed, by starving their 
trade and manufactures, remains to be tried. 

" The northern colonies, it appears, are endeavoring 
to adopt this scheme. In my opinion it is a good one, 
and must be attended with salutary effects, provided 
it can be carried pretty generally into execution. But 
to what extent it is practicable to do so, I will not take 
upon me to determine. That there will be difficulties 
attending the execution of it every where, from clash- 
ing interests, and selfish, designing men, (ever atten- 
tive to their own gain, and watchful of every turn, that 
can assist their lucrative views, in preference to every 
other consideration) cannot be denied; but in the 
tobacco colonies, where the trade is so diffused, and in 
a manner wholly conducted by factors for their prin- 
cipals at home, these difficulties are certainly enhanced, 
but I think not insurmountably increased, if the gentle- 
men in their several counties will be at some pains to 
explain matters to the people, and stimulate them to a 
cordial agreement to purchase none but certain enu- 
merated articles out of anv of the stores after such a 
period, nor import nor purchase any themselves. This, 
if it did not effectuallv withdraw the factors from their 



226 George Washington 

importations, would at least make them extremely cau- 
tious in doing it, as the prohibited goods could be 
vended to none but the non-associators, or those who 
would pav no regard to their association ; both of whom 
ought to be stigmatized, and made the objects of public 
reproach. 

** The more I consider a scheme of this sort, the more 
ardently I wish success to it, because I think there are 
private as well as public advantages to result from it, — 
the former certain, however precarious the other may 
prove. For in respect to the latter, I have always 
thought, that by virtue of the same power, (for here 
alone the authority derives) which assumes the right 
of taxation, they may attempt at least to restrain our 
manufactories, especially those of a public nature, the 
same equity and justice prevailing in the one case as 
the other, it being no greater hardship to forbid my 
manufacturing, than it is to order me to buy goods of 
them loaded with duties, for the express purpose of 
raising a revenue. But as a measure of this sort would 
be an additional exertion of arbitrary power, we can- 
not be worsted, I think, by putting it to the test. 

'' On the other hand, that the colonies are consider- 
ably indebted to Great Britain, is a truth universally 
acknowledged. That many families are reduced al- 
most, if not quite, to penury and want from the low ebb 
of their fortunes, and estates daily selling for the 
discharge of debts, the public papers furnish but too 
many melancholy proofs of, and that a scheme of this 
sort will contribute more effectually than any other I 
can devise to emerge the country from the distress it 
at present labors under, I do most firmly believe, if it 
can be generally adopted. And I can see but one set 




>- c 

^ 'bJj 



O 5 



z 



< ^ 



The Cockatrice's Egg 227 

of people (the merchants excepted,) who will not, or 
ought not, to wish well to the scheme, and that is those 
who live genteelly and hospitably on clear estates. 
Such as these, were they not to consider the valuable 
object in view, and the good of others, might think it 
hard to be curtailed in their living and enjoyments. 
For as to the penurious man, he saves his money, and 
saves his credit, having the best plea for doing that, 
which before, perhaps, he had the most violent strug- 
gles to refrain from doing. The extravagant and 
expensive man has the same good plea to retrench his 
expenses. He is thereby furnished with a pretext to 
live within bounds, and embraces it. Prudence dictated 
economy to him before, but his resolution was too weak 
to put it in practice ; For how can I, says he, who have 
lived in such and such a manner, change my method? 
I am ashamed to do it, and, besides, such an alteration 
in the system of my living will create suspicions of the 
decay in my fortune, and such a thought the world 
must not harbour. I will e'en continue my course, till 
at last the course discontinues the estate, a sale of it 
being the consequence of his perseverance in error. 
This I am satisfied is the way, that many, who have 
set out in the wrong track, have reasoned, till ruin stares 
them in the face. And in respect to the poor and needy 
man, he is only left in the same situation that he was 
found, — better, I might say, because, as he judges from 
comparison, his condition is amended in proportion 
as it approaches nearer to those above him. 

'' Upon the whole, therefore, I think the scheme a 
good one, and that it ought to be tried here, with such 
alterations as the exigency of our circumstances ren- 
ders absolutely necessary. But how, and in what 



228 Georg-e Washington 

manner to begin the work, is a matter worthy of con- 
sideration, and whether it can be attempted with 
propriety or efficacy (further than a communication 
of sentiments to one another,) before May, when the 
Court and Assembly will meet in Williamsburg, and 
a uniform plan can be concerted, and sent into the dif- 
ferent counties to operate at the same time and in the 
same manner everywhere, is a thing I am somewhat 
in doubt upon, and should be glad to know your 
opinion of." ^ 

The following is an extract from Mr. Mason's 
reply to this letter, dated the same day : 

" I entirely agree with you, that no regular plan of 
the sort proposed can be entered into here, before the 
meeting of the General Court at least, if not of the 
Assembly. In the mean time it may be necessary to 
publish something preparatory to it in our gazettes, 
to warn the people of the impending danger, and induce 
them the more readily and cheerfully to concur in the 
proper measures to avert it ; and something of this sort 
I had begun, but am unluckily stopped by a disorder, 
which affects my head and eyes. As soon as I am able, 
I shall resume it, and then write you more fully, or 
endeavor to see you. In the mean time pray commit to 
writing such hints as may occur. 

'' Our all is at stake, and the little conveniences and 
comforts of life, when set in competition with our 
liberty, ought to be rejected, not with reluctance, but 
with pleasure. Yet it is plain, that in the tobacco colo- 
nies we cannot at present confine our importations 
within such narrow bounds, as the northern colonies. 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 263. 



The Cockatrice's Egg 229 

A plan of this kind, to be practicable, must be adapted to 
our circumstances ; for if not steadily executed, it had 
better have remained unattempted. We may retrench 
all manner of superfluities, finery of all descriptions, 
and confine ourselves to linens, woollens, &c. not ex- 
ceeding a certain price. It is amazing how much this 
practice, if adopted in all the colonies, would lessen 
the American imports, and distress the various traders 
and manufacturers in Great Britain. 

" This would awaken their attention. They would 
see, they would feel, the oppressions we groan under, 
and exert themselves to procure us redress. This once 
obtained, we should no longer discontinue our impor- 
tations, confining ourselves still not to import any 
article, that should hereafter be taxed by act of Par- 
liament for raising a revenue in America ; for, how- 
ever singular I may be in my opinion, I am thoroughly 
convinced, that, justice and harmony happily restored, 
it is not the interest of these colonies to refuse British 
manufactures. Our supplying our mother country 
with gross materials, and taking her manufactures in 
return, is the true chain of connexion between us. 
These are the bands, which, if not broken by op- 
pression, must long hold us together, by maintaining 
a constant reciprocation of interest. Proper caution 
should, therefore, be used in drawing up the proposed 
plan of association. It may not be amiss to let the 
ministry understand, that, until we obtain a redress of 
grievances, we will withhold from them our commod- 
ities, and particularly refrain from making tobacco, 
by which the revenue would lose fifty times more than 
all their oppressions could raise here. 

" Had the hint, which I have given with regard to 



230 Georg-e Washington 

taxation of goods imported into America, been thought 
of by our merchants before the repeal of the Stamp 
Act, the late American revenue acts would probably 
never have been attempted." ^ 

'' To Bryan Fairfax 

*' Mount Vernon, 4 July, 1774. 
''. . .As to your political sentiments, I would heart- 
ily join you in them, so far as relates to a humble 
and dutiful petition to the throne, provided there was 
the most distant hope of success. But have we not 
tried this already ? Have we not addressed the Lords, 
and remonstrated to the Commons ? And to what end ? 
Did they deign to look at our petitions? Does it not 
appear, as clear as the sun in its meridian brightness, 
that there is a regular, systematic plan formed to fix 
the right and practice of taxation upon us? Does not 
the uniform conduct of Parliament for some years 
past confirm this? Do not all the debates, especially 
those just brought to us, in the House of Commons on 
the side of government, expressly declare that America 
must be taxed in aid of the British funds, and that she 
has no longer resources within herself? Is there any 
thing to be expected from petitioning after this? Is 
not the attack upon the liberty and property of the 
people of Boston, before restitution of the loss to the 
India Company was demanded, a plain and self-evident 
proof of what they are aiming at? Do not the sub- 
sequent bills (now I dare say acts), for depriving the 
Massachusetts Bay of its charter, and for transporting 

* Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 267, note. 
For letters to Capel Hanbury and Robert Gary, see p. 199. 



The Cockatrice's Egg 231 

offenders into other colonies or to Great Britain for 
trial, where it is impossible from the nature of the 
thing that justice can be obtained, convince us that the 
administration is determined to stick at nothing to 
carry its point ? Ought we not, then, to put our virtue 
and fortitude to the severest test? 

'' With you I think it a folly to attempt more than 
we can execute, as that will not only bring disgrace 
upon us, but weaken our cause ; yet I think we may 
do more than is generally believed, in respect to the 
non-importation scheme. As to the withholding of our 
remittances, that is another point, in which I own I 
have my doubts on several accounts, but principally 
on that of justice; for I think, whilst we are accusing 
others of injustice, we should be just ourselves; and 
how this can be, whilst we owe a considerable debt, and 
refuse payment of it to Great Britain, is to me in- 
conceivable. Nothing but the last extremity, I think, 
can justify it. Whether this is now come, is the ques- 
tion." ^ 

" The inhabitants of Fairfax County had assembled, 
and appointed a committee for drawing up resolutions 
expressive of their sentiments on the great topics, which 
agitated the country. Washington was chairman of 
this committee, and moderator of the meetings held 
by the people. An able report was prepared by the 
committee, containing a series of resolutions, which 
were presented at a general meeting of the inhabitants 
at the court-house in Fairfax County on the i8th of 
July. 

''Mr. Bryan Fairfax, who had been present on 

' Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 4I7- 



232 Georg-e Washing-ton 

former occasions, not approving all the resolutions, 
absented himself from this meeting, and wrote a long 
letter to the chairman, stating his views and objections, 
with the request that it should be publicly read." 2 



*' To Bryan Fairfax 

" Mount Vernon, 20 July, 1774. 
" Dear Sir, 

" Your letter of the 17th was not presented to me 
till after the resolutions, (which were adjudged ad- 
visable for this county to come to), had been revised, 
altered, and corrected in the committee ; nor till we 
had gone into a general meeting in the court-house, 
and my attention necessarily called every moment to 
the business that was before it. I did, however, upon 
receipt of it (in that hurry and bustle,) hastily run 
it over, and handed it round to the gentlemen on the 
bench of which there were many ; but, as no person 
present seemed in the least disposed to adopt your 
sentiments, as there appeared a perfect satisfaction and 
acquiescence in the measures proposed (except from a 
Mr. Williamson, who was for adopting your advice 
literally, without obtaining a second voice on his side), 
and as the gentlemen, to whom the letter was shown, 
advised me not to have it read, as it was not like to 
make a convert, and repugnant, (some of them 
thought,) to the very principle we were contending 
for, I forbore to offer it otherwise than in the manner 
above mentioned ; which I shall be sorry for, if it gives 
you any dissatisfaction in not having your sentiments 
read to the county at large, instead of communicating 

'Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 420, note. 



The Cockatrice's Egg- 233 

them to the first people in it, by offering them the 
letter in the manner I did. 

" That I differ very widely from you, in respect to 
the mode of obtaining a definite repeal of the acts so 
much and so justly complained of, I shall not hesitate 
to acknowledge ; and that this difference in opinion 
may probably proceed from the different constructions 
we put upon the conduct and intention of the ministry 
may also be true ; but, as I see nothing, on the one 
hand, to induce a belief that the Parliament would em- 
brace a favorable opportunity of repealing acts, which 
they go on with great rapidity to pass, and in order to 
enforce their tyrannical system ; and, on the other, I 
observe, or think I observe, that government is pur- 
suing a regular plan at the expense of law and justice 
to overthrow our constitutional rights and liberties, 
how can I expect any redress from a measure, which 
has been ineffectually tried already? For, Sir, what 
is it we are contending against? Is it against paying 
the duty of three pence per pound on tea because 
burthensome? No, it is the right only, we have all 
along disputed, and to this end we have already 
petitioned his Majesty in as humble and dutiful man- 
ner as subjects could do. Nay, more, we applied to 
the House of Lords and House of Commons in their 
different legislative capacities, setting forth, that, as 
Englishmen, we could not be deprived of this essential 
and valuable part of a constitution. If, then, as the 
fact really is, it is against the right of taxation that 
we now do, and, (as I before said,) all along have con- 
tended, why should they suppose an exertion of this 
power would be less obnoxious now than formerly? 
And what reasons have we to believe, that they would 



234 George Washing-ton 

make a second attempt, while the same sentiments 
filled the breast of every American, if they did not in- 
tend to enforce it if possible? 

'' The conduct of the Boston people could not justify 
the rigor of their measures, unless there had been a 
requisition of payment and refusal of it; nor did that 
measure require an act to deprive the government of 
Massachusetts Bay of their charter, or to exempt of- 
fenders from trial in the place where offences were 
committed, as there was not, nor could not be, a single 
instance produced to manifest the necessity of it. Are 
not all these things self evident proofs of a fixed and 
uniform plan to tax us? If we want further proofs, 
do not all the debates in the House of Commons serve 
to confirm this ? And has not General Gage's conduct 
since his arrival, (in stopping the address of his Coun- 
cil, and publishing a proclamation more becoming a 
Turkish bashaw, than an English governor, declaring 
it treason to associate in any manner by which the 
commerce of Great Britain is to be affected,) exhibited 
an unexampled testimony of the most despotic system 
of tyranny, that ever was practised in a free govern- 
ment? In short, what further proofs are wanted to 
satisfy one of the designs of the ministry, than their 
own acts, which are uniform and plainly tending to the 
same point, nay, if I mistake not, avowedly to fix the 
right of taxation? What hope then from petitioning, 
when they tell us, that now or never is the time to fix 
the matter? Shall we, after this, whine and cry for 
relief, when we have already tried it in vain ? Or shall 
we supinely sit and see one province after another fall 
a prey to despotism? If I was in any doubt, as to the 
right which the Parliament of Great Britain had to 



The Cockatrice's Egg 235 

tax us without our consent, I should most heartily co- 
incide with you in opinion, that to petition, and petition 
only, is the proper method to apply for relief; because 
we should then be asking a favor, and not claiming a 
right, which, by the law of nature and our constitution, 
we are, in my opinion, indubitably entitled to. I should 
even think it criminal to go further than this, under 
such an idea ; but none such I have. I think the Par- 
liament of Great Britain hath no more right to put 
their hands into my pocket, without my consent, than 
I have to put my hands into yours for money ; and this 
being already urged to them in a firm, but decent 
manner, by all the colonies, what reason is there to ex- 
pect any thing from their justice? 

'' As to the resolution for addressing the throne, I 
own to you. Sir, I think the whole might as well have 
been expunged. I expect nothing from the measure, 
nor should my voice have accompanied it, if the non- 
importation scheme was intended to be retarded by it; 
for I am convinced, as much as I am of my existence, 
that there is no relief but in their distress ; and I think, 
at least I hope, that there is public virtue enough left 
among us to deny ourselves every thing but the bare 
necessaries of life to accomplish this end. This we 
have a right to do, and no power upon earth can compel 
us to do otherwise, till they have first reduced us to 
the most abject state of slavery that ever was designed 
for mankind. The stopping our exports would, no 
doubt, be a shorter cut than the other to effect this 
purpose ; but if we owe money to Great Britain, nothing 
but the last necessity can justify the non-payment of 
it ; and, therefore, I have great doubts upon this head, 



236 Georg^e Washington 

and wish to see the other method first tried, which is 
legal and will facilitate these payments, 

" I cannot conclude without expressing some con- 
cern, that I should differ so widely in sentiment from 
you, in a matter of such great moment and general 
import ; and should much distrust my own judgment 
upon the occasion, if my nature did not recoil at the 
thought of submitting to measures, which I think sub- 
versive of every thing that I ought to hold dear and 
valuable, and did I not find, at the same time, that the 
voice of mankind is with me." ^ 



" To Bryan Fairfax 

" Mount Vernon, 24 August, 1774. 
" Dear Sir, 

" Your letter of the 5th instant came to this place, 
forwarded by Mr. Ramsay, a few days after my return 
from Williamsburg, and I delayed acknowledging it 
sooner, in the hopes that I should find time, before I 
began my other journey to Philadelphia, to answer it 
fully, if not satisfactorily ; but, as much of my time has 
been engrossed since I came home by company, by 
your brother's sale and the business consequent there- 
upon, in writing letters to England and now in attend- 
ing to my own domestic affairs previous to my de- 
parture as above, I find it impossible to bestow so much 
time and attention to the subject matter of your letter 
as I could wish to do, and therefore, must rely upon 
your good nature and candor in excuse for not reply- 
ing attempting it. 

" In truth, persuaded as I am, that you have read 
^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 420. 



The Cockatrice's Eg-g 237 

all the political pieces, which compose a large share of 
the Gazette at this time, I should think it, but for your 
request, a piece of inexcusable arrogance in me, to 
make the least essay towards a change in your political 
opinions ; for I am sure I have no new lights to throw 
upon the subject, or any other arguments to offer in 
support of my own doctrine, than what you have seen ; 
and could only in general add, that an innate spirit of 
freedom first told me, that the measures, which ad- 
ministration hath for some time been, and now are 
most violently pursuing, are repugnant to every prin- 
ciple of natural justice; whilst much abler heads than 
my own hath fully convinced me, that it is not only re- 
pugnant to natural right, but subversive of the laws 
and constitution of Great Britain itself, in the establish- 
ment of which some of the best blood in the Kingdom 
hath been spilt. Satisfied, then, that the acts of a 
British Parliament are no longer governed by the prin- 
ciples of justice, that it is trampling upon the valuable 
rights of Americans, confirmed to them by charter and 
the constitution they themselves boast of, and convinced 
beyond the smallest doubt that these measures are the 
result of deliberation, and attempted to be carried into 
execution by the hand of power, is it a time to trifle, or 
risk our cause upon petitions, which with difficulty ob- 
tain access, and afterwards are thrown by with the ut- 
most contempt? Or should we, because heretofore 
unsuspicious of design, and then unwilling to enter 
into disputes with the mother country, go on to bear 
more, and forbear to enumerate our just causes of com- 
plaint ? For my own part, I shall not undertake to say 
where the line between Great Britain and the colonies 
should be drawn ; but I am clearly of opinion, that one 



238 George Washing-ton 

ought to be drawn, and our rights clearly ascertained. 
I could wish, I own, that the dispute had been left to 
posterity to determine, but the crisis is arrived when 
we must assert our rights, or submit to every im- 
position, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and 
use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the 
blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway. 

'' I intended to have wrote no more than an apology 
for not writing ; but I find I am insensibly running into 
a length I did not expect, and therefore shall conclude 
with remarking, that if you disavow the right of Par- 
liament to tax us, (unrepresented as we are,) we only 
differ in respect to the mode of opposition, and this 
difference principally arises from your belief, that they 
— the Parliament, I mean, — want a decent opportunity 
to repeal the acts ; whilst I am as fully convinced, as I 
am of my own existence, that there has been a regular, 
systematic plan formed to enforce them, and that 
nothing but unanimity in the colonies (a stroke they 
did not expect) and firmness, can prevent it. It seems 
from the best advices from Boston, that General Gage 
is exceedingly disconcerted at the quiet and steady con- 
duct of the people of the Massachusetts Bay, and at 
the measures pursuing by the other governments ; as 
I dare say he expected to have forced those oppressed 
people into compliances, or irritated them to acts of 
violence before this, for a more colorable pretense of 
ruling that and the other colonies with a high hand. 
But I am done." ^ 

In these letters Washington simply shows a high 
degree of common-sense intelligence — no genius 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 429. 



The Cockatrice's Egg 239 

for oratory, rhetoric, or expression, except in the 
lucid presentation of plain facts such as they ap- 
peared to the average country gentleman of the day. 
" When the people meddle with reasoning," said 
Voltaire almost at this very time, " all is lost." 

Washington was one of this thinking mob. The 
calm, contemplative life at Mount Vernon left him 
leisure to think. 



CHAPTER XIII 



REVOLUTIONS frequently concentrate them- 
selves in the nutshell of a popular cry : even 
ecclesiastical revolutions have thus stamped them- 
selves with the ineffaceable stigma of revolt. At 
the Reformation, '' the just shall live by faith " be- 
came the watchword of the reformers. At the 
period of the French Revolution, '' liberie, egalite, 
fraternite '' rang on all the air of the time. In the 
Revolution of 1688, chartered rights and institutions 
were the dominant thought of statesmen and popu- 
lace alike, and the thought coined itself into pithy 
and golden phrases pregnant with historic meaning; 
occasionally, as in Egmont's time, some simple 
object, like the beggar's scrip, was snatched up and 
became the visible tabernacle of the indwelling rev- 
olutionary spirit. 

In America, between 1765 and 1775, ''Liberty, 
Property, No Stamps ! " rang from New Hampshire 
to Georgia; and even when the odious Act — all 
except the tax on tea — was repealed, the fury of 
the popular imagination fixed on tea as the symbol 
of an infernal sovereignty, which popular patience 
w^ould no longer brook. 

Tea — tea, the tiny monosyllable of three letters. 
240 



■^ 


1 ' ' 


HBI^HH 


•:% 


i; J 


i 


1 


H^^^^^^^hI 


B"'^ 


E^ 




H 


^^mSM^^HH^^^^^^^^^^^^^HH 


I^^K. 


HE^kl^B 


'~~. 


H 


i^^l^^^B^^^^^^^I^^^^H^^^HB 


■HI 


'^^-T* 


1 j 


1 


^. '^v^l^^^lfS^^^^^^^HUH 


fl 




ETi 


H 


' o^Hb^^I^^^^^hH 


^P;U 




B« 






M 


■3 


HI 


'^i. ...J 


tm- . ' V'J:^i d'ltfi^^^H 












:i 


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-J. 1 




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i<.- «. * . . 




■ ." J 



WASHINGTON ARCH, NEW YORK CITY, 



**The Deadly Tea-Chest" 241 

embodied in its small self, to the mind of that day, 
the whole creed of tyranny. From the first whiff 
of this delightful beverage, wafted to us in old 
Pepys's Diary of 28th September, 1660, " I did 
send for a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I 
had never drank before." Two years later he 
writes : " Home, and there find my wife making of 
tea, a drink which Mr. Felling the Fothicary tells her 
is good for her cold and defluxions " : from this 
time, the tea-kettles of England multiplied its con- 
sumption to more than five millions of pounds; in 
every household of the United Kingdom, Camellia 
theifera, whether of the Thea sinensis variety of 
Linnaeus, or of other varieties and graftings, had 
become indispensable to a well-ordered household. 
Millions of tea-kettles steamed merrily over millions 
of hearths, waiting for the cunningly rolled leaves 
or fragrant powders to be steeped, for the delecta- 
tion of lonely fireside or literary gathering. His- 
toric tea-bibbers like Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale 
have been handed down to posterity, on an equal 
footing with tobaccophiles like Lord Tennyson or 
coffee-drinkers like Napoleon. Tea-houses had 
sprung up like magic all over the kingdom. Of the 
5,000,000 pounds imported, at least 1,500,000 sent 
up clouds of fragrant steam from American caddies. 
Washington w^as passionately fond of tea, and 
rivalled the great lexicographer in his devotion to 
this fluid, enthusiastically joining his contempora- 
ries in the institution of the afternoon tea. 

Tea, in short, represented a harmless luxury in- 



242 George Washington 

dulged in by thousands who, surmounting the stiff 
prices, contrived to get it for the alleviation of the 
long evenings, or for a mild and agreeable medicine 
described by Pepys. 

Yet tea — tea, the most harmless and delectable 
of drinks, bubbling peacefully in its kettle, or steep- 
ing demurely in the exquisite pots prepared es- 
pecially for it — now became the sign and symbol 
of Revolution, red, ruthless, infuriate! 

'' So for the next three years tea was the symbol 
with which the hostile spirits conjured. It stood for 
everything that true freemen loathe. In the deadly 
tea-chest lurked the complete surrender of self-gov- 
ernment, the payment of governors and judges by the 
crown, the arbitrary suppression of legislatures, the 
denial of the principle that freemen can be taxed only 
by their own representatives. So long as they were 
threatened with tea, the colonists would not break the 
non-intercourse agreement. Once the merchants of 
New York undertook to order from England various 
other articles than tea, and the news was greeted all 
over the country with such fury, that nothing more 
of the sort was attempted openly. As for tea itself 
shipped from England, one would as soon have 
thought of trying to introduce the Black Death." ^ 

The tea drunk by 2,500,000 people did not weigh 
an atom in this balance in comparison with the 
principle at stake. At first it had been stamps, 
whose heraldic device of the royal arms — two lions 
rampant upholding a much-quartered shield — 

^ Fiske, Essays Historical and Literary, vol. ii, p. 186. 



"The Deadly Tea-Chest" 243 

seemed, to the humorous imagination of the day, 
to dance on the Hberties of the colonies ; now it was 
tea, which after the impost on glass, painter's 
colours, red and white lead, still remained proud and 
defiant, a revolutionary plant on the ministry's tax- 
list, as the symbol of British power and sovereignty 
never to be yielded or removed. 

And so the childish contention — infinitely child- 
ish it would seem to us now, had not great funda- 
mental principles of self-taxation underlaid it — 
went on, until seventeen millions of pounds of this 
insidious vegetable had heaped themselves up in the 
East India Company's warehouses. 

The American nation was young then, and apolo- 
gists might attribute this abnormal excitement to 
over-strained nerves and juvenility in general; the 
very passion for tea might have turned its brain into 
a passion against tea, as the fetish of an over-excited 
fancy. 

But the ever-increasing note of indignation, 
traceable in the letters of Washington in our last 
chapter, now swelled to a great diapason of discon- 
tent. It was like the breath of one of those cyclonic 
storms far in the West: beginning as a whisper, 
almost as a lullaby of feverish unrest at its birth 
in the mountains, it rolls eastward, swift and irre- 
sistible, gathering volume and vindictiveness as it 
sweeps on, until the hurricane-point is reached. 

Washington's admirable presentation of the calm, 
common-sense side of the troubles, as viewed by the 
typical Virginia gentleman of 1765, was no less 



244 George Washington 

effective, though much more dignified, than the 
wild turmoil of speech that prevailed in some of the 
other colonies. 

The north-eastern colonies were indeed strenuous 
examples of precocious political development, a de- 
velopment which unlike the radiant adolescence of 
the South, had been stimulated less by suns than 
snows, less by soft open-air exercises and luxurious 
plantation life, than by granite hills, grim icicles and 
cutting blasts: Boreas rather than Zephyr presided 
over the New England household. And it was pre- 
cisely these ill-favoured surroundings, which might 
be called lovely and majestic only when they melted 
into the emerald curves of the Green Mountains, or 
the opaline crests of Mount Washington, or gathered 
into exquisite lakes that tremble like quicksilver in 
the " pockets " of the Maine forests — it was these 
very ill-favoured surroundings that evoked one of 
the most remarkable little political societies which 
the world has seen, since Athenian democracy met 
in the agora and discussed the policy of Xerxes or 
of Sparta. 

" Massachusetts," like " Virginia," was originally 
one of those vague geographic terms, whose inclu- 
siveness stretched over the hemisphere like the 
streamers of the zodiacal light, touching nothing but 
embracing everything. The generous autocrats of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave away 
lands by parallels of latitude, continents, worlds, 
without even questioning the right to give. Massa- 
chusetts, at the time of which we are speaking, em- 



* ' The Deadly Tea-Chest " 245 

braced the vast and picturesque territory of Maine, 
whose French name recalled its Gallic antecedents. 
On its granite foundations, hidden out of sight by 
deep cushions of luxuriant grass and interminable 
stretches of spice-breathing conifem, had planted 
themselves two hundred lively little towns, whose 
triple glories were the grammar-school, the town- 
meeting, or ancient folk-moot of the Germanic race, 
and the Puritan meeting-house. From the begin- 
ning, all New England believed in this trmity, 
whatever the later cavilling of its Unitarian eccle- 
siastics might be. Education, free discussion, village 
politics grew to be the " fad," the infatuation of 
the two hundred thousand white people who had 
made this wilderness blossom like a rose, and planted 
a fruit-tree where a prickly thistle had grown before. 
The country lanes were full of decent httle villages 
whose tapering church-spires were, at once, monu- 
ments of the new life, and reminiscences of the far- 
away English homes from which the villagers had 
come Everything buzzed and hummed with hearty 
activities; the rudely shaped dwellings were often 
the handiwork of the indwellers, built to last, and 
furnished with every reasonable convenience. In 
some cases, the nails and wrought-iron work and 
simple furnishings were the direct offspring of the 
toil of men who attached their vigorous hiero- 
glyphic to the Declaration, or founded a hne 
punctuated to the present time with distinguished 
names. In time, the Mayflower budded into a won- 
derful world of leaf, and blossom and fruit— a 



246 Georg^e Washington 

floating garden which had brought the Old World 
to the New — and infinitely more, for here even the 
new-born children of the Newest Testament be- 
queathed by the Old to the New, along with a world 
of new-born possibilities, hopes, ambitions — new 
eyes to look at things, new brains to think of them, 
new mouths to speak and, after a while — to sing of 
them in strains sung the world over. At first all 
seemed '' granulation," disintegration, Congrega- 
tionalism of an independent touch-me-not kind, 
most unpromising for future union and harmony, 
discordant notes scattered on the hills without one 
thought of those high federal harmonies one day to 
flow from these. 

It had required just one hundred and fifty years 
from the first step on Plymouth Rock to the begin- 
ning of the Revolution, when Boston, now a town 
of eighteen thousand folk enthroned on its penin- 
sula, seemed to push forth its tongue of flame into 
the blue bay, and speak wrath and defiance to the 
venerable mother on the other side of the water. 
For in the century and a half just elapsed the com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts Bay had become 
grizzled in the Indian wars, wonderfully wise in its 
own conceit, a trifle supercilious in its intellectual 
arrogance, petulant in the extreme to outside med- 
dling, jealous of its own privileges and of the pre- 
rogatives of others, afflicted with beginnings of that 
intellectual insomnia which has been its character- 
istic from that day to this, perpetually peeping over 
its neighbour's fences to see what people over there 



*'The Deadly Tea-Chest" 247 

are doing, yet scouring and scourging its own pots 
and kettles to the ultimate degree of brightness. A 
curious, inquiring prying and peeping into corners 
of grandmother's cupboard marked this infant com- 
monwealth : not to meddle with religion was a sin, 
not to meddle w^ith politics was a shame, not to go 
to town-meeting, not to go to something when you 
were duly elected, was a crime. The highest sense 
of public duty grew in these people as weeds grew in 
others : civic pride, municipal virtue, vast concern in 
the doings of legislatures and assemblies, endless 
patience in listening to endless debate, provided the 
subject was improvement, reform, education, libra- 
ries, schools, beneficence ; the ears of the New Eng- 
landers would gloat for ever over these magnetic 
topics, and listen far into the night to the proposi- 
tions of Selectman This or Assemblyman That, 
designed to introduce the Golden Age at once, w^ith- 
out a moment's delay, on the banks of the Charles, 
the Merrimac, or the Penobscot. 

John Harvard, himself, had been born not far 
from Shakspere's town, and had founded an institu- 
tion just outside of Boston, which had given a cer- 
tain Shaksperian turn and versatility to the culture 
of New England, as the sister institution at Wil- 
liamsburg had imprinted a kind of Miltonic elo- 
quence and intonation on the early culture of 
Virginia. Every year, the whitest fleece, the most 
unblemished lambs of Harvard went forth into the 
ecclesiastical fold, and shepherded the souls of New 
England along the paths at first of rigid Puritanism, 



248 George Washington 

then of orthodoxy less cold, clear, passionless, final- 
ly, into the by-paths of a heterdoxy which insisted 
only on the blameless life and the lofty ideal. Har- 
vard, indeed, was the one institution to which New 
England might point with absolute pride, as abso- 
lutely typical both of its life and of its ideal. It was 
the noble child of a young man just one-and-thirty, 
whose gift of three hundred volumes has grown to 
more than as many hundred thousands, and whose 
few hundred pounds have multiplied, like the Bib- 
lical ten talents put out at interest, almost exclusively 
from the splendid munificence of private individuals. 

William and Mary College was the offspring of 
a King and a Queen, and from the moment of its 
birth was hampered by its royal birthmark. 

A spiritual promenade among the galleries of 
New England worthies reveals long lines of clear- 
cut faces marked with the insignia of high thought, 
— pale, intellectual, often fierce with the struggles 
of inward passion and inward suffering, highly 
spiritualised masks burnt translucent by the fires of 
a soul, prophetic of the Edwardses and Hutchinsons 
and Adamses yet to come, high-born men and 
women whose cold eyes flash steel or Stoic on occa- 
sion, portraits all nerve and muscle, as the wrinkling 
centuries move on and stamp their infinite crow's- 
feet into the gelatine mould of the soul, slightly 
starchy, ministerial, clerical here and there, flakes 
of clear quartz with veins of gold in it ; a wondrous 
collection of human beings whom Copley or Trum- 
bull or Peale or Stuart have singled out from the 




JOHN ADAMS, 
From a steei engraving. 



*'The Deadly Tea-Chest" 249 

passing crowd, and fixed for ever on the canvas in 
speaking lineaments. 

It was out of this New England that that monu- 
mental group of men (not yet large enough to be 
called heroes) sprang, who turn and gaze at us for 
a moment out of their golden frames and pass on : 
Samuel Adams, John Adams, Thomas Hutchinson, 
Benjamin Franklin, James Otis, Josiah Quincy, 
Joseph Warren, even Paul Revere, " the patriot 
Mercury " on his eternal Valkyrie-ride of news- 
telling to the remoter colonies. How these figures 
flame as we gaze at them, filling with an invisible 
life, quivering with an unseen intelligence, longing 
to tell us the story of their lives, eager to communi- 
cate the secrets of the year, 1764, 1768; of Feb. 22 
and March 5, 1770; of Hutchinson's " spy " letters; 
of the "Indians," of Dec. 16, 1773; of tea-party 
and tea-ships as they sailed gaily into Boston Bay, 
not knowing it was the open mouth of the dragon ! 

For these dates and events stand out in bead-like 
distinctness among the linked anniversaries of the 
decade, incising their notches deep into the living 
marble of the time. 

In 1765, the Virginia Resolutions of Patrick 
Henry, against the Stamp Act, had been the drop 
of rennet that ran the colonies together in massive 
coagulation. Three years later, owing to the enor- 
mous pressure of opinion at home and abroad, the 
odious Act was repealed, and another cockatrice's 
^g^, still more odious, — import tax on tea, glass, 
and painter's material, — began to hatch out its 



250 Georg^e Washing^ton 

'' vermin." Troops arrive to enforce the Revenue 
Acts, and the curious Httle episode, dignified as 
'' The Boston Massacre," stains the 5th of March, 
1770, with a red more indehble than Rizzio's 
blood. The Committees of Correspondence and the 
Circular Letters of legislatures travel their planetary 
way from province to province during this decade, 
informing the people what was being done, and 
sending a glare of illumination into wildernesses 
unreached as yet by the Boston newspapers, or the 
Virginia Gazette. Exact historians, scrupulous of 
their dotted i's and crossed f s, still battle over the 
question whether Massachusetts or Virginia origi- 
nated the Circular Letter and the Committee of 
Correspondence, those all-powerful agencies in the 
spread of the Revolution ; whoever be the originator, 
they were in virulent activity at this time and earlier, 
and were the honeycombs in which the honey of 
the deflowered fields w^as stored up for future use, — 
honey often of the sardonic kind, turning into bitter- 
ness on the tongue of the consumer. 

At last, we reach that moonlight night of icy 
December of the expiring year 1773, when, as by 
one giant exhalation, all the pent-up fiery energy 
of the ten years gone by, concentrated to fury and 
becoming ungovernable, wrenched itself loose and 
poured forth in a stream of rebellion. 

Ludicrous as '' the Boston Tea Party " may ap- 
pear to some historians commenting with exagger- 
ated hyperbole on the revolutionary days, the event 
was kindred in spirit to the mutilation of the HermcB 



"The Deadly Tea-Chest" 251 

which influenced Athens in the Peloponnesian 
war. Samuel Adams and Alcibiades were far apart 
in most particulars, but there are points enough of 
resemblance between them. 

If Massachusetts was the tongue of the Revolu- 
tion, Samuel Adams, '' the chief incendiary," was its 
chosen mouthpiece. This man, by pure intellectual 
ability, shrewdness, sharpness, " Yankee wit," or 
whatever one may call it, became everything that it 
was possible for a man of that day to become, ex- 
cept President of the United States — selectman, clerk 
of the assembly, assemblyman, speaker, delegate to 
the first Continental Congress, lieutenant-governor, 
governor, and senator of the United States, rising 
like Washington with the buoyant irrepressible force 
of which we have previously spoken. As the hero 
of all the events that led straight up to the " tea- 
party," Samuel Adams, the incarnation of Massa- 
chusetts, deserves abundant attention. He is the 
chief propulsive force of his time, a born leader, 
standing behind every forward movement, shoulder 
to shoulder with every difficulty, not a passive 
Caryatid merely supporting measures, but a glow- 
ing sculptor, rending the figure out of the mountain 
and dragging it with infinite toil over the sands of 
the desert. 

Hardly a resolution of the town-meeting or the as- 
sembly that he did not draft or pen or edit or emend. 
His finger was in every pie : he lived at town-meet- 
ing rather than at home, and when he slept, doubt- 
less, dreamt resolutions, amendments, remonstrances 



252 Georg-e Washington 

to King and Parliament. He was, in short, one of 
those subHme busybodies (in the best sense) who 
meddle with everybody else's business, and with 
superlative unselfishness forget their own. On one 
of the currencies of 1776 stood the following legend : 

Fugio: a sun-dial: mind your business 

a device which never could have occurred to Samuel 
Adams, for " minding his own business " was his 
last thought when he could mind the public's. 

This endless attention to other people's affairs 
was what made Adams a thorn in the side of Mas- 
sachusetts, and Massachusetts a crown of thorns on 
the brow of the British Parliament. The highest 
compliment which his second cousin, John Adams, 
could pay Charles Thompson, first and most famous 
clerk of the first Continental Congress of 1774, was 
that " he was the Sam Adams of Philadelphia." 

The acute, high-voiced, soprano civilisation of 
the New England of this period was, indeed, a 
curious mixture of femininity and intense masculine 
strength. Its marked characteristic was the utter 
lack of self-control, inability to hold its tongue, ex- 
citability of temper more usually found in tropic 
latitudes, and a " gift of gab " perilous in the ex- 
treme to a good understanding with the mother- 
country. The east wind had entered into its coun- 
sels and constitution, and given a sharpness to the 
unruly member that amounted to acerbity. 

As the magnificent curves of the New World 
swept north-eastward in graceful zigzag toward the 



^*The Deadly Tea-Chest" 253 

Arctic Circle, it seemed as if the little cluster of 
battling commonwealhs, on the north-eastern tip, 
were being purposely pushed out into the tem- 
pestuous seas to steel their nerves, as tools of glitter- 
ing steel are given edge in ice. Indeed, the threshold 
of the Revolution was the laboratory, in which the 
edge-tools of New England speech began to sharpen 
to that fineness which, only fifty years later, was to 
come to artistic consciousness on the fastidious lips 
of Emerson and Hawthorne, of Longfellow and Poe. 
The deep Puritan nature, introverted upon itself, 
speculating for ever upon the high themes of Provi- 
dence and Fate, sunk in contemplation of the Biblical 
narratives, and their symbolic application to the 
Puritan world, Hebraic in the very flash of the eye 
and the utterance of the circumcised heart, enveloped 
in the metaphors of the Hebrew Commonwealth, as 
well as surrounded by the conditions of the Israelite 
wilderness, awfully smitten of conscience, awfully 
conscious of sin and guilt,— the deep Puritan nature 
began to develop that subtlety and eloquence, which 
the tinker of Bedford jail had somehow communi- 
cated to his followers by a kind of mystic chrism ; 
the germs of mysticism and transcendentalism, al- 
ways latent in the New England mind, began to stir 
uneasily in their sleep, and point towards germina- 
tion on the lips of the Alcotts and Thoreaus, Fullers 
and Frothinghams, Ripleys and Brook Farm folk 
of a generation or two later. 

It was with hundreds of thousands of people of 
this tried and clever kind, that the British Empire, 



254 George Washing^ton 

through its constitution, that curious compound of 
law, precedent, tradition, and atmosphere, was about 
to engage in deadly combat. 

" I rejoice," said Robertson the historian, kins- 
man of Patrick Henry, in language which this Vir- 
ginia statesman might himself have used, " I rejoice 
that a million free men in America will now be 
allowed to run the career which other free people 
have held before." 

When the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, 
therefore, laden with 342 chests of tea, sailed into 
Boston harbour with bellying shrouds and streaming 
pennants, the situation looked blue indeed. This 
was the electric shock that thrilled instantaneously 
through the loosely-membered colonies, and welded 
the links together, for the same tea that saturated 
Boston salt water with its myriads of fragrant 
granules rotted in damp cellars in Charleston, South 
Carolina, or mouldered and blackened in the tea- 
caddies of New York and Philadelphia. Tea, the 
abhorred stimulant, once typical of entrancing even- 
ings at Mrs. Thrale's and Miss Burney's, floating 
in our brains from out the leaves of Johnson's Dic- 
tionary and the tea-scented Spectators — tea, inter- 
lined with '' Dunciads " and *' Elegies," ascending 
delightfully (with stronger aromas) from the 
manuscripts of Fielding, De Foe and Smollett, and 
floating hazily over the whole Georgian era, — tea 
now stood for Tyranny, for Taxation without 
Representation, for thousandfold forms of antago- 
nism never imagined before, for the machinations of 



**The Deadly Tea-Chest" 255 

the British cabinet whose fluctuations, " many as the 
waves, one as the sea," concentrated their insistence 
upon the one central conception that Parliament was 
supreme to tax the colonies, representation or no, 
representation. Anti-tea clubs filled the land : 
spinsters and sedate married people alike eschewed 
the poisonous drink. Tea meant Toryism; no tea 
meant "independency" as the quaint word (soon 
terrible in its encyclopaedic significance) began to 
be written in Washington's and Franklin's corres- 
pondence. All over the land, busy activities began 
to spring up : looms and spindles whizzed and 
hummed merrily in the chimney corner; home in- 
dustries of all sorts started into being; plantation 
life in Virginia received a vast stimulus from the 
non-importation agreements ; men began to re- 
member after a while where the lead mines were, 
and old recipes for making gunpowder were hunted 
up. 

It was an ominous sign that frigates began to 
take the place of merchant-vessels, generals began to 
succeed civilians as governors of Massachusetts and 
the other colonies, scarlet coats instead of tie-wigs 
and black gowns spangled the entrance-steps to 
court-houses and judicial buildings; the civilian era 
was over: "Sam Adams's regiments" (as Lord 
North called them) had come and were now snugly 
ensconced in Boston town for better or for worse. 

The momentous struggle w^as at hand. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE STRUGGLE BEGINS 

DROP by drop the cup of excitement had been 
fining up until at last, in 1774, the brim was 
reached and it seemed about to run over. Our pre- 
ceding chapters rehearsed the grievances of the 
decade, the vacillating character of the British policy 
and administration, the views held in England it- 
self as to the impolicy and unrighteousness of the 
course pursued by Grenville, Townshend, and Lord 
North, the perils of the standing army question, 
and the unwisdom of the Island Parliament in at- 
tempting to impose revenue and taxation laws on a 
whole continent, thousands of miles away, absolutely 
without representation in the assembly of Great 
Britain. 

" England has long arms," threatened one of 
those who favoured this policy, " but three thousand 
miles is a long way to extend them," was the quick 
retort. 

And this was precisely the difficulty. To be three 
thousand miles from headquarters, the stormy and 
treacherous sea between, with the old-fashioned 
frigates and store-ships lumbering heavily over the 
distances ; to land a few thousand regulars at Boston, 
New York, and Philadelphia, behind which a popu- 

256 



The Struggle Begins 257 

lation of three millions was in arms — undisciplined 
it may be — to tease, torment, nag, destroy them 
force by force; to engage in a hopeless contest, 
contrary to all the dictates of reason, justice, and 
common sense, with their own flesh and blood, while 
France and Spain, bursting with recent hostility and 
spleen, looked on, waiting the chance to spring : the 
epic folly of such a course was apparent to Burke, 
Chatham, and Lord Camden from the beginning; 
and a far-sighted child might have foreseen the end. 

*' The spirit which resists your taxation in Amer- 
ica," said Chatham, " is the same that formerly op- 
posed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in Eng- 
land. . . . This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates 
three millions in America who prefer poverty with 
liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who 
will die in defence of their rights as freemen. . . . 
For myself, I must declare that in all my reading and 
observation — and history has been my favorite study 
— I have read Thucydides, and I have studied and 
admired the master states of the world — that for 
solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom 
of conclusion under such a complication of difficult 
circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in 
preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia. 
. . . All attempts to impose servitude upon such men, 
to establish despotism over such a mighty continental 
nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be 
forced ultimately to retract. Let us retract while we 
can, not when we must ! " ^ 

^ Lecky, England in the i8th Century, vol. iii, p. 577. 



258 Georg-e Washington 

This noble outburst spoke the plainest common 
sense to the assembled wisdom of Great Britain, yet 
it was not heeded. It seems, indeed, as if at certain 
periods madness seized a whole people, as it seized 
the French in 1870-71 and ran riot through the 
popular brain. There is a madness of just indigna- 
tion and a madness of pure folly. Undoubtedly, 
says Thackeray in his Four Georges, the American 
war was very popular in England : great majorities 
supported it in Parliament. George III. even en- 
joyed the title of the " patriot King," and intrenched 
in the hereditary stubbornness which was character- 
istic of the Brunswick line, his feeble mind, already 
flickering on the verge of insanity, fixed itself on 
the one idea of chastising a rebellious people and 
bringing them back to their allegiance. Amiable 
and charming as the monarch appears in the fas- 
cinating pages of Fanny Burney, where he appears 
completely en deshabille, — in dressing-gown and 
slippers as it were, — he possessed an inflexibility of 
nature that could not be turned, once an idea affect- 
ing the royal prerogative had fixed itself there. 

Of this end of the actuating causes of the great 
struggle, Jefferson gave a clear conception when 
he wrote : 

'' The following is an epitome of the first fifteen 
years of his [George III.] reign. The colonies were 
taxed internally and externally ; their essential in- 
terests sacrificed to individuals in Great Britain, their 
lec^islatures suspended ; charters annulled ; trials by 
juries taken away; their persons subjected to trans- 



The Strug-g-le Begins 259 

portation across the Atlantic, and to trial before 
foreign judicatories ; their supplications for redress 
thought beneath answer ; themselves published as 
cowards in the councils of their mother-country and 
courts of Europe ; armed troops sent amongst them 
to enforce submission. Between these could be no 
hesitation. They closed in the appeal to arms. They 
declared themselves independent states. They con- 
federated together into one great republic ; thus se- 
curing to every state the benefit of an union of their 
whole force. In each state separately a new form of 
government was established." ^ 

Meantime, events were hurrying on in America 
with frightful rapidity. England was so far away, 
and the means of communication so slow and un- 
certain, that historic happenings of great magnitude 
and far-reaching consequences had been conceived, 
born, and realised, before an intimation of their 
existence reached the shores of Albion. In March, 
1774, while Boston Bay was still flavoured with the 
Bohea that had been thrown into it, the Boston Port 
Bill was passed in retaliation for the East India 
Company's tea, the port was sealed up hermetically 
against outside trade, and Parliament undertook 
to remove the capital to Salem, a word which with 
bitter irony meant " Peace." News of what was 
going on flew, in some incredible manner, through 
the length and breadth of the land. The excitement 
grew tense. There must have been enormous horse- 
back travel in those days, to carry the news-budgets 

^Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, p. 158. 



26o Georg^e Washington 

from town to town and from colony to colony, until 
New Hampshire and Georgia (loyally named from 
the Brunswick line) were talking about the same 
things almost simultaneously — the insults put on 
Franklin in London, the scandal of the Hutchinson 
letters, the ridicule and abuse hurled by old Sam 
Johnson on the Americans as '' a race of convicts — a 
pack of rascals. Sir ! " the quartering of troops every- 
where, and the blind obstinacy of Parliament in in- 
sisting on asserting its unconditional supremacy 
over everything American. Even the coolest natures 
kindled and caught heat from the wide-spread dis- 
cussions. We find Washington presiding over pro- 
testing bodies of neighbours and friends in Fairfax 
County (where his autograph will and the old county 
record-books, filled with references to him, are still 
to be seen), and at last see the patriot en route for 
Williamsburg as a delegate, bearing to the burgesses 
the admirable " Fairfax Resolves " on the situation, 
in the handwriting of George Mason. About the 
middle of May he reached Williamsburg, and kept 
up courteous relations with Lord Dunmore all the 
time that his very soul must have burned with in- 
dignation against him. It is almost pathetic to read 
of the balls and dinner-parties at the " Palace," to 
which Washington and the more influential bur- 
gesses were invited, when the hearts of all were 
unstrung, and gloom reigned supreme over the little 
city. 

As soon as the news of the Boston Port Bill 
reached Williamsburg, the burgesses met in solemn 



The Struggle Begins 261 

conclave to remonstrate, and appointed June ist as 
a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer to sup- 
plicate the Almighty to avert the horrors of a war. 

Lord Dunmore with incisive speech dissolved the 
burgesses. 

But the burgesses were not thus to be punished 
like unruly children : they re-assembled immediately 
in the famous Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern, 
and called a convention to assemble August ist for 
the purpose of further action on the parliamentary 
measures, and the selection of delegates to a pro- 
posed Continental Congress at Philadelphia, Sep- 
tember 5, 1774. Massachusetts almost simultane- 
ously proposed the same measure and chose dele- 
gates. Virginia chose Washington, Richard Henry 
Lee and Patrick Henry (the great orators), Richard 
Bland, Peyton Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, and 
Benjamin Harrison (ancestor of the two presidents). 

" Went to church and fasted all day," is the single 
graphic entry in Washington's Diary, June i, 1774. 

The other colonies and provinces now went to 
work to choose their most distinguished and public- 
spirited men as delegates to the Congress, and soon 
the highways were dotted with horsemen or old- 
fashioned chariots, bearing the patriots to the banks 
of the Schuylkill. On August 31st, Washington, 
Patrick Henry, and Edmund Pendleton set out from 
Mount Vernon, and turned their horses' heads to- 
wards Philadelphia. Four days later they arrived 
and soon the rooms of Carpenters' Hall (where they 
assembled) echoed with the passionate and majestic 



262 Georg-e Washington 

words and written resolutions, which aroused the in- 
tense sympathy and admiration of Lord Chatham. 
Peyton Randolph of Virginia was chosen president, 
and the moulding of the celebrated bill of grievances 
and remonstrances to the Crown was left largely in 
the hands of Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry. 
Each colony had sent its shrewdest and best men. 
Illustrious names were there from South Carolina, 
Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and the smaller 
colonies were not behind. For eloquence, Rutledge 
of South Carolina took the palm, but for solid in- 
formation and efficiency, Colonel Washington stood 
head and shoulders above every one else, in Henry's 
opinion. Silas Deane and John Adams were de- 
lighted with the bearing of the Southerners. " There 
are some fine fellows come from Virginia," said 
Joseph Reed, " but they are very high. We under- 
stand that they are the capital men of the colony." 

" It is related that the Earl of Dartmouth inquired 
of an American, in London, of how many members 
the Congress consisted ? the reply was, ' Fifty-two.' 
— ' Why that is the number of cards in a pack,' said 
his lordship ; ' how many knaves are there ? ' — ' Not 
one,' answered the American, * your lordship will 
please to recollect that knaves are court cards.' " ^ 

For fifty-one days the Congress wrestled with its 
mighty problems, now of life and death to all. 

" For seven weeks of almost continuous session 
did it hammer its stiff business into shape, never 

^ Lossing, Washington and the American Repithlic, vol. i, 
P- 441. 



The Strug-g-le Begins 263 

wearying of deliberation or debate, till it could put 
forth papers to the world — an address to the King, 
memorials to the people of Great Britain and to the 
people of British America, their fellow-subjects, and 
a solemn Declaration of Rights — which should mark 
it no revolutionary body, but a congress of just and 
thoughtful Englishmen, in love, not with license or 
rebellion, but with right and wholesome liberty. Their 
only act of aggression was the formation of an 
'American Association,' pledged against trade with 
Great Britain till the legislation of which they com- 
plained should be repealed. Their only intimation of 
intentions for the future was a resolution to meet 
again the next spring, should their prayers not mean- 
while be heeded. 

" Washington turned homeward from the congress 
with thoughts and purposes every way deepened and 
matured. It had been a mere seven weeks' confer- 
ence; no one had deemed the congress a government, 
or had spoken of any object save peace and accom- 
modation ; but no one could foresee the issue of what 
had been done." ^ 

This Congress indeed was nothing more than a 
Solemn League and Covenant of Committees of 
Correspondence, Committees of Safety, delegations 
from now outlawed provincial assemblies, Sons of 
Liberty working on the desperate task of the birth 
of a new nation. Through these agencies, infor- 
mation flew^ from town to tow^n. ''To Arms!" 
rang like a battle-cry all over America. 

The months succeeding October, 1774, to March, 

^ Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, p. 164. 



264 George Washington 

1775, were months not of words but of deeds: men 
met, assemblies convened, only to arm themselves, 
to drill, to elect officers, to secure ammunition, to 
prepare for civil war. 

The vernal equinox of March, 1775, saw the 
second great revolutionary convention of Virginia 
meet at Richmond, for the purpose of making mili- 
tary preparations of defence. It was at this con- 
vention that Patrick Henry, who dominated it with 
his tongue of fire, introduced his memorable reso- 
lutions of resistance, and ended them with a speech 
in which the ever-famous words occur : 

" It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentle- 
men may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace. The 
war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps 
from the north will bring to our ears the clash of 
resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the 
field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gen- 
tlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so 
dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the 
price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty 
God! I know not what course others may take, but 
as for me, give me liberty, or give me death ! " ^ 

Jefferson, a member of the body, truly pronounced 
Henry '' the leader of the Revolution," '' far in ad- 
vance of the rest of us." A few weeks later, on 
the 19th of April, a clash between the '' minute men " 
of Massachusetts and General Gage's British soldiers 
occurred at the little town of Lexington, while the 
regulars w^re on their way to Concord (strange 

'Tyler, Patrick Henry, p. 128. 







CARPENTERS' HALL, PHILADELPHIA. 
Wherein met the first Continental Congress, 1774. 



The Strug-g-le Begins 265 

name for the times!) to seize the military stores 
there accumulated, and soon three hundred of the 
poor fellows bit the dust in their foolish pride of 
subjugation. The rest retreated hastily to Boston, 
and Paul Revere began another of his celebrated 
rides (in ancient Grecian wise) to scatter the news 
far South. 

Two days later, '' the rape of the Gunpowder " by 
Lord Dunmore brought affairs in Virginia to an 
acute crisis. He landed marines in the night at 
Williamsburg, and spirited away from the old 
'* Powder Horn " magazine all the powder stowed 
there for the defence of the colony. 

This excited intense indignation, and five thou- 
sand men, virtually led by Patrick Henry (really 
captain only of his own company), rushed toward 
Williamsburg demanding restitution of the powder 
or its value in money. 

The terrified Earl chose the latter course, and the 
money was handed over to Henry. Lady Dunmore 
and her daughters fled to a place of safety. Twenty 
days later Philadelphia saw the second solemn re- 
volutionary Congress convene. May loth. 

The Virginia delegates were the same as before. 
John Hancock, a patriotic citizen and wealthy 
" grandee " from Massachusetts, a friend and fa- 
vourite of Samuel Adams, was president of the Con- 
gress. Its master stroke was the election of Colonel 
Washington Commander-in-chief of the forces of 
the United Colonies. The Virginian had first been 
proposed by John Adams, but no formal action was 



266 Georg^e Washing-ton 

taken until he was, later, nominated to the position 
by Thomas Johnson of Maryland. 



'' To Mrs. Martha Washington 

''Philadelphia, i8 June, 1775. 
" My Dearest, 

" I am now set down to write to you on a subject, 
which fills me with inexpressible concern, and this 
concern is greatly aggravated and increased, when I 
reflect upon the uneasiness I know it will give you. 
It has been determined in Congress, that the whole 
army raised for the defence of the American cause 
shall be put under my care, and that it is necessary 
for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take upon 
me the command of it. 

" You may believe me, my dear Patsy, when I 
assure you, in the most solemn manner, that, so far 
from seeking this appointment, I have used every 
endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my 
unwillingness to part with you and the family, but 
from a consciousness of its being a trust too great 
for my capacity, and that I should enjoy more real 
happiness in one month with you at home, than I 
have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if 
my stay were to be seven times seven years. But as 
it has been a kind of destiny, that has thrown me 
upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking 
it is designed to answer some good purpose. You 
might, and I suppose did perceive, from the tenor of 
my letters, that I was apprehensive I could not avoid 
this appointment, as I did not pretend to intimate 
when I should return. That was the case. It was 



The Strug-g-le Beg-ins 267 

utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment, 
without exposing my character to such censures, as 
would have reflected dishonor upon myself, and given 
pain to my friends. This, I am sure, could not, and 
ought not, to be pleasing to you, and must have less- 
ened me considerably in my own esteem. I shall 
rely, therefore, confidently on that Providence, which 
has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me, 
not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the 
fall. I shall feel no pain from the toil or the danger 
of the campaign ; my unhappiness will flow from the 
uneasiness I know you will feel from being left alone. 
I therefore beg, that you will summon your whole 
fortitude, and pass your time as agreeably as possible. 
Nothing will give me so much sincere satisfaction as 
to hear this, and to hear it from your own pen. My 
earnest and ardent desire is, that you would pursue 
any plan that is most likely to produce content, and a 
tolerable degree of tranquillity, as it must add greatly 
to my uneasy feelings to hear, that you are dissatis- 
fied or complaining at what I really could not avoid. 

" As life is always uncertain, and common pru- 
dence dictates to every man the necessity of settling 
his temporal concerns, while it is in his power, and 
while the mind is calm and undisturbed, I have, since 
I came to this place (for I had not time to do it 
before I left home) got Colonel Pendleton to draft a 
will for me, by the directions I gave him, which will 
I now enclose. The provision made for you in case 
of my death will, I hope, be agreeable. 

'* I shall add nothing more, as I have several let- 
ters to write, but to desire that you will remember 
me to your friends, and to assure you that I am, with 



268 Georgfe Washington 

the most unfeigned regard, my dear Patsy, your af- 
fectionate, etc." ^ 

The modesty of this letter is only paralleled by 
that of the Duke of Wellington, of almost the same 
date, though forty years later, giving the tidings of 
the battle of Waterloo. 

The two dates mark eras in the history of modern 
times. 

The fires of rebellion were now burning brightly 
all along the coast line. At Boston, the centre of 
the turbulence, sixteen thousand provincials had 
assembled from all sides, and threatened the ten 
thousand regulars gathered there to protect British 
interests. The inactivity of these soldiers was nobly 
vindicated by Lord Chatham that same year in the 
words of Lord Brougham : 

*' In 1775, he made a most brilliant speech on the 
war. Speaking of General Gage's inactivity, he said 
he could not be blamed ; it was inevitable. ' But what 
a miserable condition,' he exclaimed, ' is ours, where 
disgrace is prudence, and where it is necessary to be 
contemptible! You must repeal these acts,' (he said, 
alluding to the Boston Port and Massachusetts Bay 
Bills,) 'and you will repeal them. I pledged myself 
for it, that you will repeal them. I stake my reputa- 
tion on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot if 
they are not finally repealed.' Every one knows 
how true this prophesy proved. The concluding sen- 
tence of the speech has been often cited : ' If the 
ministers persevere in misleading the King, I will 

^ Ford, W?-itings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 483. 



The Struggle Begins 269 

not say that they can ahenate the affections of his 
subjects from his crown; but I will affirm that they 
will make the crown not worth his wearing. I will 
not say that the King is betrayed; but I will pro- 
nounce that the Kingdom is undone.' 

" Again, in 1777, after describing the cause of the 
war and ' the traffic and barter driven with every 
little pitiful German Prince that sells his subjects to 
the shambles of a foreign country/ he adds : ' The 
mercenary aid on which you rely irritates to an in- 
curable resentment the minds of your enemies, whom 
you overrun with the sordid sons of rapine and of 
plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the 
rapacity of hireling cruelty ! If I were an American 
as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was 
landed in my country, I never would lay down my 
arms, never ! never ! never ! ' " 

Undoubtedly, this kind of inactivity and hesitancy 
proved in the end fatal to the British cause : they 
never could persuade themselves that the Americans 
would persevere in so hopeless-looking a case; they 
always believed they would go down before the in- 
vincible valour of the regulars, and sue for peace and 
pardon on short notice. 

In this they were wofully mistaken. Months be- 
fore, Patrick Henry (soon to be appointed com- 
mander of all the Virginia forces and, a little later, 
chosen first republican Governor of the State) had 
lifted up a warning voice and proclaimed the impos- 
sibility of success for the English. The assemblages 
of armed men everywhere gathering were not mere 
rnobs, undisciplined, lawless, and independent as 



270 Georg^e Washington 

they might seem. Thousands of the 231,000 who 
served in the Revolution were trained Indian fight- 
ers, frontiersmen, hunters, trappers, expert with gun 
and hatchet, resourceful, hardened to every kind of 
toil, a yeomanry such as perhaps the world had not 
up to that date seen. As marksmen many of the 
67,000 men furnished by the gallant little colony of 
Massachusetts to the Revolutionary forces were fa- 
mous. The following anecdote throws light on the 
subject : 

''Among the incidents of the British possession of 
the town, Andrews relates two, which indicate that 
the dry humor and dialect of the Yankee are not of 
recent discovery. 

" It's common for the soldiers to fire at a target 
fixed in the stream at the bottom of the Common. 
A countryman stood by a few days ago, and laughed 
very heartily at a whole regiment's firing, and not 
being able to hit it. The officer observed him, and 
asked why he laughed. ' Perhaps you'll be affronted 
if I tell you,' replied the countryman. No, he would 
not, he said. ' JVhy then,' says he, ' I laugh to see 
how awkward they fire, why, I'll be bound I hit it ten 
times running.' — 'Ah! will you?' replied the officer. 
' Come try. — Soldiers, go and bring five of the best 
guns, and load 'em for this honest man.' — ' Why, you 
need not bring so many : let me have any one that 
comes to hand,' replied the other. But I chuse to 
load myself.' He accordingly loaded, and asked the 
officer where he should fire. He replied, ' To the 
right,' when he pulled tricker, and drove the ball as 
near the right as possible. The officer was amazed, 



The Strug-gle Beg-ins 271 

and said he could not do it again, as that was only 
by chance. He loaded again. ' Where shall I fire ? ' 
— ' To the left,' when he performed as well as before. 
' Come, once more ! ' says the officer. He prepared 
the third time. ' Where shall I fire naowf ' — ' In the 
centre.' He took aim, and the ball went as exact in 
the middle as possible. The officers as well as sol- 
diers stared, and thought the devil was in the man. 
' Why' says the countryman, ' I'll tell you naow. I 
have got a boy at home that will toss up an apple, 
and shoot out all the seeds as it's coming down.' " ^ 

It was a '' mob "of this sort that greeted Wash- 
ington when he arrived at Boston, shortly after the 
battle of Bunker Hill, June, 1775 : men who had an 
intelligent comprehension of what they fought for, 
and why they fought : volunteers who, by their own 
volition, had enlisted for longer or shorter terms, 
to defend sacred rights of home and fireside, and 
great constitutional principles on which their very 
existence depended. 

In the battle on and around Bunker Hill, a 
thousand splendid redcoats and many a gallant offi- 
cer gave bloody tribute to the marksmanship and 
valour and power to stand of the " backwoodsmen." 
The sharp rattle of musketry from the independents 
proved, in this first conflict, almost a match for the 
platoon firing and massed advance of historic regi- 
ments, whose laurels had been gained on European 
battle-fields. It was a trial of strength which boded 

^ H. E. Scudder, Men and Manners in America One Hun- 
dred Years Ago, p. 21. 



272 Georg-e Washing-ton 

well for the Americans. The flying engagement of 
Lexington, and the determined though undisciplined 
resistance of Bunker Hill, were to be types of the 
whole six years and a half of war. Until Baron 
von Steuben came to Washington at Valley Forge, in 
1778, the Americans knew little — one might better 
say, absolutely nothing — of regular discipline. The 
camp-fire, the Indian trail, the lonely bivouac in the 
wood, the log-cabin pierced with holes for flint-locks, 
the solitary vigil against war-whoop and scalping- 
knife, the drift down the winding river, the plunge 
into the untrodden wilderness : these had been their 
'' Jomini," their manuals of drill and exercise, their 
text-books in arms. 

News of the Bunker Hill engagement had indeed 
reached Washington as he journeyed on horseback 
to Cambridge, to assume command of the army, and 
the way seemed wonderfully — to some Providential- 
ly — cleared for the new commander to enter upon 
his novel responsibilities, before the severe season 
set in. For though in this engagement the Ameri- 
cans suffered a check, their spirit came out brilliant- 
ly and showed a mettle that augured ill to their foes 
in the future. The invincible spirit of General Put- 
nam, Colonels Prescott, Stark, Gardner, Gridley, Dr. 
Warren, and the other American commanders, the 
valour of the ill-fed and disorganised militiamen be- 
hind their amateur redoubts on Breed's and Bunker 
Hills, opposite Boston, the stout resistance offered 
by fifteen hundred men to the whole British army 
and fleet under General Howe and Sir Henry Clin- 



The Struggle Begins 273 

ton, then in Boston, instantly predicted to all 
thoughtful men the stubborn and sanguinary nature 
of the conflict just begun. 

The 17th of June, 1775, was thus a memorable 
date in American history, afterwards commemorated 
by the obelisk raised on Bunker Hill, the corner- 
stone of which was laid by LaFayette. 

The slaughter of nearly 1500 men of the same 
flesh and blood — 450 on the American, 1054 on the 
British side, — the death of the noble Warren and 
Major Pitcairn, the wounding of Lord Howe him- 
self, the tenacity and fury shown on both sides, were 
omens terrible indeed to the lovers of peace, and sent 
thrills of pride and horror over the whole world of 
that day. 

When Washington reached Cambridge, July 3, 
1775, Boston was already in a state of siege, and 
the new Commander-in-chief had his hands full. 

Settling first in the house of the president of 
Harvard College, Washington transferred his head- 
quarters, later, to Craigie House, afterwards well- 
known as the Cambridge residence of the poet, Long- 
fellow. From now on, begins an absolutely busy 
and preoccupied life for Washington, such as he had 
never lived before. His magnanimous conduct in 
declining to receive a salary as General, in return 
for his services, had excited universal applause : all 
he claimed was a bare reimbursement for his private 
expenses, which from this time appear scrupulously 
recorded in pounds, shillings, and pence in his day- 
books. The letters and newspapers of this time re- 



274 George Washington 

cord his progress from town to town, from Phila- 
delphia to New York, through Connecticut and 
Rhode Island to Cambridge. Of his personal ap- 
pearance at the time, so distinguished by gravity, 
dignity, and intelligence, we have the following tes- 
timony : 

'' July 2nd, 1775. — I have been much gratified this 
day with a view of General Washington. His Excel- 
lency was on horseback in company with several mil- 
itary gentlemen. It was not difficult to distinguish 
him from all others ; his personal appearance is truly 
noble and majestic; being tall and well proportioned. 
His dress is a blue coat with buff-colored facings, a 
rich epaulette on each shoulder, buff underdress, and 
an elegant small sword ; a black cockade in his hat." ^ 

General Greene in writing to Samuel Ward, July 
14th, says : 

" His Excellency, General Washington, has arrived 
amongst us, universally admired. Joy was visible in 
every countenance, and it seemed as if the spirit of 
conquest breathed through the whole army. I hope 
we shall be taught, to copy his example, and to pre- 
fer the love of liberty, in this time of public danger 
to all the soft pleasures of domestic life, and support 
ourselves with manly fortitude amidst all the dangers 
and hardships that attend a state of war. And I 
doubt not, under the General's wise direction, we 
shall establish such excellent order and strictness of 
discipline as to invite victory to attend him wherever 
he goes." 

^ Baker, Itinerary of General Washington, 1775-1783, p. 12. 



The Strug-g-le Begins 275 

He at once established that remarkable system of 
dispatches to Congress — long, detailed, explicit — 
from which he never swerved during the entire war, 
and which kept this body circumstantially informed 
of every minutest need, hope, and aspiration. They 
form a kind of Caesar's Commentaries on the War 
of the Revolution. 

The first and ever-increasing need was ammu- 
nition : only nine rounds per man remained after the 
battle of Bunker Hill. The next w^as a military 
chest — no money was forthcoming; a commissary- 
general; quartermaster-general; ten thousand hunt- 
ing-shirts for the ill-clad troops; hospital-stores for 
the sick ; a military staff : in short, a thousand things 
never dreamt of by the citizen Congress, unfamiliar 
with the organisation of armies. Letters proffering 
help poured in from General Schuyler, Governor 
Trumbull of Connecticut, Generals Putnam and 
Gates, Richard Henry Lee and other members of 
Congress, all proclaiming Washington's appoint- 
ment Providential and destined to save the empire. 

For even yet — July, 1775 — the Congress at Phila- 
delphia was, through the pen of John Dickinson, 
breathing timid hopes of reconciliation with the 
mother-country. It was the year of Burke's magnif- 
icent speech on " Conciliation with the Colonies," 
now one of the classics of British oratory. It is on 
abundant record that Franklin, Jefferson, and Wash- 
ington never conceived a final separation possible 
until, a year later, the immortal Declaration had 
shaped itself distinctly — after a thousand remon- 



276 George Washington 

strances, petitions, expostulations in vain — in the 
minds of the Committee of Five who drafted it. 
The invading troops were deUcately called " minis- 
terial," not royal troops, so that the whole respon- 
sibility for the war might be thrown upon Parlia- 
ment and the Ministry, not upon the King. 

The Commander-in-chief, on his white Arabian 
charger, soon became a well-known figure as he 
journeyed to and fro through the camps, on his tire- 
less mission of inspection, reconnaissance, redoubt- 
building, and military engineering, for the benefit 
of all and for the strengthening of his position. He 
had judiciously divided his army into three corps, 
the left commanded by Charles Lee (afterwards 
known as "the soldier of fortune"), the centre at 
Cambridge under General Putnam, and the right at 
Roxbury under General Ward. 

The siege of Boston, as it was soon called, was 
now actively begun. Generals Howe, Clinton, Gage, 
and Burgoyne (son-in-law of the Earl of Derby) 
commanded the British forces. 

Monster petitions were meanwhile being handed 
around by John Wilkes (Lord Mayor of London) 
and eleven hundred of the wealthiest citizens of the 
metropolis, imploring the King to stop in his ruin- 
ous policy to his loyal subjects; even Congress 
thanked their British fellow-citizens for their earn- 
est endeavours to avert war ; but all was in vain. 

The middle and end of the year were marked 15y 
brilliant successes for the Americans under Benedict 
Arnold, Ethan Allen, General Schuyler, and the he- 




MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES LEE. 
From an English engraving published in 1776. 



The Struggle Begins 277 

roic Montgomery, in the Canadian campaign against 
Sir Guy Carleton on Lake Champlain, Montreal, 
and Quebec. Ticonderoga and Crown Point, 
Chambly, and St. John, fell, loaded with stores 
of ammunition, cannon, and provisions, into the 
hands of the patriots and gave infinite encourage- 
ment to the cause. In the course of the campaign, 
appeared numerous figures afterwards celebrated 
in the annals of the war: Major Andre, Benedict 
Arnold, Aaron Burr (the wayward grandson of 
Jonathan Edwards, later Vice-President of the 
United States), and William Pitt, secretary to Sir 
Guy Carleton, son of the great Earl, afterwards 
prime minister of Great Britain. Washington and 
Gage, the rival commanders at Boston, had been in- 
timately associated together with Braddock in his 
tragic expedition against Fort Du Quesne. 

The year, however, was to end in disaster, for 
December 31st saw the crushing defeat and death 
of Montgomery at Quebec, Arnold with a bullet 
through his leg, Captain Daniel Morgan and his 
heroic riflemen surrounded and captured, and the 
high hopes of the Americans annihilated. 

The glory of the whole campaign seemed dark- 
ened by this disaster ; yet countervailing distinctions 
awaited the Americans. On January i, 1776, the 
first flag of the Continental Army w^as unfurled at 
Cambridge, for the first time. It consisted of thir- 
teen stripes of alternate red and white, with a 
'' union Jack " of the crosses of St. George and St. 
Andrew in the upper corner, later to be substituted by 



278 Georg-e Washington 

a blue field sprinkled with white stars, a new star 
for every new State. Two months and a half later, 
on the ever-memorable 20th of March, 1776, the 
American army entered Boston, after the hurried 
retreat of Lord Howe with nine thousand regulars 
and nine hundred loyalists. The patriot army had 
seized and fortified Dorchester Heights, which com- 
pletely commanded the British positions and ren- 
dered their immediate evacuation imperative. The 
town was humanely allowed to stand as it was 
without being burned, a policy imitated by Wash- 
ington a few months later when he evacuated New 
York. 

At this very time, the obnoxious manifesto of 
Lord North against the rebellion in the name of 
the King was under discussion in Parliament, and 
the hiring of 17,500 '' Hessians " at thirty-six dol- 
lars a head for service in America roused the ridicule 
and indignation of Frederick the Great and all 
Europe. 

A large number of these stupid mercenaries, on 
their arrival in America, became enamoured of their 
new surroundings, deserted or were " captured " or 
married, and settled down in comfortable homes far 
from the petty German tyrants who had sold them 
to infamy and death in a foreign land. 

Great was the joy over the fall of Boston ; the 
thanks of Congress and of many provincial assem- 
blies poured in upon Washington and his troops. 
Harvard conferred the degree of LL. D. on the 
chief, and admiration rose almost to adoration. 



The Strug-g-le Begins 279 

Leaving five regiments under General Ward to 
garrison Boston, Washington swiftly turned to New 
York, selected and fortified commanding spots in 
its neighbourhood, and rode to Philadelphia to re- 
ceive the orders and felicitations of Congress. At 
first with only nine or ten thousand men he hastened 
to occupy and put up defensive works on Long 
Island, at Harlem Heights, King's Bridge, and Fort 
Washington. The vast strategic importance of New 
York to both sides was incalculable. Opening like 
great jaws into the heart of the land, the harbour 
was spacious enough to float the navies of the world, 
and draw up into the interior the frigates and flo- 
tillas of a sea power that was regarded as invincible. 
Whoever first occupied this impregnable position 
might well seem to be master of the continent. 

On the 3rd of July, the Bay suddenly became 
white with over a hundred sail, and Lord Howe 
proceeded to land on Staten Island some of the 
twenty-five regiments deemed sufficient by the min- 
istry for the conquest of the New World. 

The day after, July 4th, 1776, proclaimed to the 
civilised world that the United States had come into 
existence, that all allegiance to Great Britain had 
been absolutely thrown off, and that a free anc 
sovereign people now ruled over the Western Hem- 
isphere. Written at the most solemn moment of the 
Revolution, when all hope of reconciliation had ab- 
solutely died out, the sentences of the Declaration 
of Independence rang with an eloquence which 
startled all mankind and asserted truths so univer- 



28o Georg-e Washing-ton 

sally held to be beyond question, that it became at 
once the text-book of the newer constitutions in all 
modern constitutional movements. 

The writer of this celebrated document was 
Thomas Jefferson, afterwards Governor of Virginia, 
Secretary of State, and third President of the 
United States. His associates on the committee 
were John Adams (second President of the United 
States), Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and 
Robert Livingston. Adams and Jefferson both 
lived until the 4th of July, 1826, when, singularly 
enough, both expired on the same day within a few 
hours of each other. 

The opening paragraphs are as follows : 

''A Declaration By The Representatives Of The 
United States Of America, In General Congress 
Assembled. 

'' When, in the course of human events, it becomes 
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands 
which have connected them with another, and to ac- 
sume among the powers of the earth the separate and 
equal station to which the laws of nature and of na- 
ture's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opin- 
ions of mankind requires that they should declare the 
causes which impel them to the separation. 

" We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all 
men are created equal ; that they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that 
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness ; that, to secure these rights, governments are 
instituted among men, deriving their just powers 
from the consent of the governed ; that whenever any 




MAJOR-GENERAL NATHANAEL GREENE. 
From the painting by Col. John Trumbull. 



The Struggle Begins 281 

form of government becomes destructive of these ends 
it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, 
and to institute a new government, laying its founda- 
tion on such principles, and organizing its powers in 
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect 
their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will 
dictate that governments long established should not 
be changed for light and transient causes ; and accord- 
ingly all experience hath shovvn that mankind are 
more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, 
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to 
which they are accustomed. But when a long train 
of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the 
same object, evinces a design to reduce them under 
absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, 
to throw off such government, and to provide new 
guards for their future security. Such has been the 
patient sufferance of these colonies ; and such is now 
the necessity which constrains them to alter their 
former system of government. The history of the 
present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated 
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object 
the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these 
states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a 
candid world, etc., etc., etc. ... 

" We, therefore, the representatives of the United 
States of America in General Congress assembled, 
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the 
rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by 
the authority of the good people of these colonies, 
solemnly pukish and declare that these United Col- 
onies are, and of right ought to be, free and inde- 
pendent states; that they are absolved from all alle- 



282 George Washington 

giance to the British crown, and that all political con- 
nection between them and the state of Great Britain 
is, and ought to be, totally dissolved ; and that, as free 
and independent states, they have full power to levy 
war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish com- 
merce, and to do all other acts and things which inde- 
pendent states may of right do. 

" And for the support of this declaration, with a 
firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, 
we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our for- 
tunes, and our sacred honor." 



CHAPTER XV 

THE HEART OF THE REVOLUTION 

NOT many clays elapsed before Washington had 
the Declaration of Independence publicly 
read, from the balcony of the old City Hall in Wall 
Street, to the assembled commands. All doubt and 
hesitation were now, once and for ever, cast away : 
the United Colonies were in full revolution: men 
cast in their lot either for or against it; and neu- 
trality was no longer possible. The large and im- 
portant body of loyalists were in acute distress. 
Business interests, ties of blood and of association 
bound them strongly to England; yet the patriot 
armies were full of their kinspeople, and, whichever 
way they turned, they were searched by the " fires 
of civil discord," levied upon by both sides, insulted 
and detested by both Monarchists and Republicans, 
and in a fair way to be ground to pieces between the 
two. Large numbers of Quakers, Canadians, 
Anglicised French, Dutch, and even numbers of 
influential colonial families of Virginia, Maryland, 
North and South Carolina, sided with the British, 
and entangled Washington and the Congress in 
infinite perplexities and difficulties. Plots to kid- 
nap or murder Washington began to hatch during 
the next few months ; cabals and intrigues arose, in 

283 



284 George Washington 

and out of the army ; and the launching of the Revo- 
lution was beset with dangers. 

Just one year had passed away, since Washington 
had mounted his horse and ridden proudly away to 
Cambridge to assume the position of Commander-in- 
chief. The siege and fall of Boston had signalised 
the beginning of the struggle as a brilliant success. 
Without training in the regular army, destitute of 
technical knowledge as a soldier, educated indeed in 
the woods purely as an Indian fighter, or against 
wandering bodies of nomad French and Canadians, 
Washington began now, in the face of endless dif- 
ficulties, to develop that genius for command and 
for the utilisation of scant resources, which excited 
the admiration of Frederick the Great, and, later, of 
Cornwallis and Napoleon. " The finger of God was 
in it," remarked Bonaparte, and when, five years 
later, the English commander handed over his sword 
at Yorktown, he could not repress his admiration for 
the manner in which his captor had conducted the 
Jersey campaign, now about to open. Strategic- 
ally weak as was the American's position at any 
given point on the enormously entended line — Bos- 
ton, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Cape Fear, 
Charleston — yet so full of resource was Washington, 
assisted by Generals Gates and Mifflin and the Con- 
gressional Board of War, that the invaders were 
successively baffled, checked, circumvented, sur- 
rounded at every point, and confessed themselves 
absolutely worn to pieces by the '' Fabian policy " 
of the Americans. No other policy was practicable 



The Heart of the Revolution 285 

at a time when the Articles of Confederation were 
hardly signed, centralised government did not exist, 
Congress, itself, was full of lukewarm adherents of 
the Declaration, and jealousies, deep-seated and 
alarming, between different sections of the country 
began to manifest themselves in and out of Phila- 
delphia, the temporary continental capital. 

The alertness, resourcefulness, vigilance, and in- 
domitable spirit of Washington and his noble corps 
of frontier-bred generals — Putnam, Arnold, An- 
drew Lewis, Montgomery, Schuyler, Sullivan, 
Greene, Moultrie, Marion, and Ward— rose equal to 
the occasion, and buoyed up the faltering steps of 
the patriots in a fashion w^hich ultimately rendered 
them as steadfast as the rock. 

" In Washington," says John Fiske, " were combined 
all the highest qualities of a general— dogged tenacity 
of purpose, endless fertility in resource, sleepless vig- 
ilance, and unfailing courage. No enemy ever caught 
him unawares and he never let slip an opportunity for 
striking back. He had a rare geographical instinct, 
alwavs knew where the strongest position was and 
how to reach it. He was a master of the art of con- 
cealing his own plan and detecting his adversary's. 
He knew better than to hazard everything on the 
result of a single contest; because of the enemy's su- 
perior force he was so often obliged to refuse battle 
that some of his impatient critics called him slow ; but 
no general was ever quicker in dealing heavy blows 
when the proper moment arrived. He was neither 
unduly elated by victory nor discouraged by defeat. 
When all others lost heart, he was bravest ; and at the 



286 George Washington 

very moment when ruin seemed to stare him in the 
face, he was craftily preparing disaster and confusion 
for the enemy. To the highest quaHties of a mihtary 
commander there were united in Washington those of 
a political leader. From early youth he possessed the 
art of winning men's confidence. He was simple 
without awkwardness, honest without bluntness, and 
endowed with rare discretion and tact. His temper 
was fiery and on occasions he could use pretty strong 
language, but anger or disappointment was never al- 
lowed to disturb the justice and kindness of his judg- 
ment. Men felt themselves safe in putting entire 
trust in his head and his heart, and they were never 
deceived. Thus he soon obtained such a hold upon 
the people as few statesmen ever possessed. It was 
this grand character that with his clear intelligence 
and unflagging industry enabled him to lead the na- 
tion triumphantly though the perils of the Revolu- 
tionary War. He had almost every imaginable hard- 
ship to contend with — envious rivals, treachery and 
mutiny in the camp, interference on the part of Con- 
gress, jealousies between the states, want of men 
and money ; yet all these difficulties he vanquished. 
Whether victorious or defeated in the field, he baf- 
fled the enemy in the first year's great campaign, and 
in the second year's ; and then for four years more 
upheld the cause, until heart - sickening delay was 
ended in glorious triumph. It is very doubtful if 
without Washington the struggle for independence 
would have succeeded. Other men were important 
— he was indispensable." 

Add to this fine tribute the words of the eminent 
historian, John Richard Green : 



The Heart of the Revolution 287 

" No nobler figure, ever stood in the fore front of 
a nation's life. Washington was grave and courteous 
in address ; his manners were simple and unpretend- 
ing; his silence and the serene calmness of his temper 
spoke of a perfect self-mastery. But there was little 
in his outer bearing to reveal the grandeur of soul, 
which lifts his figure, with all the simple majesty of 
an ancient statue, out of the smaller passions, the 
meaner impulses of the world around him. What 
recommended him for command was simply his 
weight among his fellow-land-owners of Virginia, 
and the experience of war, which he had gained by 
services in border contests with the French and 
Indians, as well as in Braddock's luckless expedition 
against Fort Duquesne. It was only as the weary 
fight went on that the colonists discovered, however 
slowly and imperfectly, the greatness of their leader, 
his clear judgment, his heroic endurance, his silence 
under difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger 
or defeat ; the patience with which he waited, the 
quickness and hardness with which he struck, the 
lofty and serene sense of duty that never swerved 
from its task through resentment or jealousy, that 
never through war or peace felt the touch of a meaner 
ambition, that knew no aim save that of guiding the 
freedom of his fellow-countrymen, and no personal 
longing save that of returning to his own fireside 
when their freedom was secured." 

Washington's '' centurie of praise " would be in- 
complete without the words of another great 
Englishman, whose superlative insight into char- 
acter w^as never blinded by insular prejudice. 



288 George Washington 

" He had the glory," wrote Thackeray, '' of facing 
and overcoming not only veterans amply provided and 
inured to war, but wretchedness, cold, hunger, dissen- 
sions, treason within his own camp, where all must 
have gone to rack but for the pure unquenchable 
flame of patriotism that was for ever burning in the 
bosom of the heroic leader. What a constancy, what 
magnanimity, what a surprising persistency against 
fortune ! Washington before the enemy was no bet- 
ter nor braver than hundreds that fought with him 
or against him. But Washington, the chief of a na- 
tion in arms ; doing battle with distracted parties ; 
calm in the midst of conspiracy ; serene against the 
open foe before him and the darker enemies at his 
back ; Washington inspiring order and spirit into 
troops hungry and in rags ; stung by ingratitude, but 
betraying no anger, — and never so sublime as on that 
day when he laid down his victorious sword and 
sought his noble retirement — here indeed is a char- 
acter to admire and revere, a life without a stain, a 
fame without a flaw.'* 

If Washington was in any sense " Fabius," he 
was a Fabius to whose name the not ignoble epithet 
'' Maximus " must be attached. 

'' The die is cast," cried George III., '' and the 
colonies must either triumph or submit." 

And what was the character of the King whom 
fate or fortune had pitted against the American, in 
whose veins ran the strength, the coolness, the 
courage, the unconquerable will of an ancestry far 
more perfectly English than the King's ? An Amer- 



The Heart of the Revolution 289 

ican would hesitate to write the words : let them, 
therefore, fall from the pen of an English historian : 

'' During the first ten years of his reign," says 
Green, *' he managed to reduce government to a 
shadow, and to turn the loyalty of his subjects at home 
into disaffection. Before twenty years were over he 
had forced the American colonies into revolt and 
independence and brought England to what then 
seemed the brink of ruin. Work such as this has 
sometimes been done by very great men, and often 
by very wicked and profligate men ; but George was 
neither profligate nor great. He had a smaller mind 
than any English King before him since James 11. 
He was wretchedly educated and his natural powers 
were of the meanest sort. Nor had he the capacity 
for using greater minds than his own, by which some 
sovereigns have concealed their natural littleness. 
On the contrary his only feeling toward great men 
was one of jealousy and hate. But dull and petty as 
his temper was, he was clear as to his purpose and 
obstinate in the pursuit of it; and his purpose was 
to rule. . . . 

'* The blow which shattered the attempt of England 
to wield an autocratic power over her colonies, shat- 
tered the attempt of the King to establish an auto- 
cratic power over England itself. The ministry, 
which bore the name of Lord North, had been a mere 
screen for the administration of George HI., and its 
ruin was the ruin of the system he had striven to build 
up. Never again was the crown to possess such 
power as he had wielded. . . . 

'' The irony of fate doomed him to take the first 



2QO Georg-e Washing-ton 

step in an organic change which has converted that 
aristocratic monarchy into a democratic repubhc, 
ruled under monarchical forms." 

In the pages of Miss Burney's Diary this " little " 
King appears as a gentle, harmless, gay, fascinating 
person, eaten through and through with unconscious 
selfishness, surrounded by six lovely princesses, his 
daughters, worshipped by " the most sweet queen " 
Charlotte, flitting in and out of the palace rooms, 
through which he is soon to wander in desolate and 
irreparable madness, haranguing imaginary parlia- 
ments and addressing imaginary armies. History 
does not present a more pitiable or more tragic 
figure. 

The preceding eulogies on Washington's abili- 
ties as a soldier, engineer, and tactician were rapidly 
realised in the following months. While he could 
not of course be everywhere, his far-seeing eye and 
indefatigable pen swept to every part of the long line, 
saw and met difficulties, swept away obstacles, pro- 
vided for every emergency, anticipated as far as 
possible every movement of the enemy. 

The first year of the Revolution had come and 
gone, the experimental stage had passed; great 
movements in Canada and the Carolinas had taken 
place, vacillating between success and failure. In 
Canada, Arnold and Montgomery after heroic 
marches, splendid attacks, and daring enterprises on 
the St. Lawrence, at Quebec and Montreal, had at 
last succumbed to Carleton and the regulars; Mont- 
gomery was killed, Arnold wounded; Canada had 



The Heart of the Revolution 291 

to be evacuated, and the Americans retreated to 
Crown Point and Ticonderoga. Generals Schuyler 
and Gates were left in ambiguous relations as to the 
supreme command of the Northern army, and jeal- 
ousies flamed forth anew. 

In the South, on the other hand, fortune had 
attended General Lee, Colonel Moultrie, and Colonel 
Thompson in the defence of Charleston, when Sir 
Peter Parker, Sir Henry Clinton, and the English 
fleet had been gallantly repulsed, the fleet driven off 
to New York, and peace and quiet secured for the 
Carolinas for three years to come. 

By the middle of August, 1776, the vicinity of 
New York swarmed with from twenty-five to thirty 
thousand British regulars and Hessians under the 
Howes, Earls Cornwallis and Percy, Clinton, 
Parker, De Heister (commander of the Hessians), 
and Grant, while the lower Bay and Hudson River 
presented a menacing picture of scores of great 
battle-ships, transports, sloops of war, floating bat- 
teries for the destruction of the city and its sur- 
roundings. 

Had the British had one commander of striking 
ability at this stage of the war— one-tenth of a 
Marlborough, one-fiftieth of a Wellington— how 
different might have been the tale to tell ! But run, 
for a moment, over the list of starred and gartered 
incompetence — Gage, the Howes, Burgoyne, Clin- 
ton, Parker, Carleton, Tarleton, Cornwallis, many 
of these men " parlour knights " armed with mani- 
festoes, proclamations, honeyed words, rather than 



292 George Washing-ton 

with the sense of true right and justice; what else 
could be expected than — Yorktown ? 

The same blundering shortsightedness, which had 
characterised the Howes at Boston, now pursued 
them at New York. Thousands of splendid troops 
trained in the British regular army were at their 
command, — one might add, at their mercy; yet no 
effective steps were taken to sever the confederacy 
in twain, cut off New England from Pennsylvania 
and Virginia, and thus force the belligerents to sue 
for peace. The same gross inertia seized and pos- 
sessed the foreigners at Philadelphia, when that city 
fell into their hands some months later ; and though 
their approaching occupation of New York was to 
last more than seven long years, until the Revolution 
had been two years an accomplished fact, they never 
even handled the acquisition like intelligent beings, 
much less as the most significant conquest of the 
war. They held it indeed, but with what exhibitions 
of folly, with what ceaseless inactivity, what dis- 
regard of its strategic importance, what weakness 
and instability of purpose! 

The operations around New York, in the autumn 
of 1776, were a signal illustration of Washington's 
ability, under the most harassing circumstances, in 
keeping the enemy at bay. in defending heroically 
a line huge, sinuous, indefensible at many points, in 
holding his own on the whole, and in wearing out a 
foe skilled in attack and overflowing with resources. 
New York and its environs were much too vast for 
him, with his slender resources, famished militia- 



The Heart of the Revolution 293 

men, and rebellious soldiery, to retain or to defend; 
yet for months together he kept up the unequal 
struggle, with Howe's and Parker's and Dunmore's 
combined fleets anchored in the bay, thousands of 
regulars whitening Staten Island and Long Island 
with their tents and martial glitter, and every advan- 
tage of arms and accoutrements, known at this time, 
in possession of his antagonists. His irregular and 
undisciplined troops were overmastered in an en- 
gagement called the battle of Brooklyn Heights, in 
August; but he escaped with marvellous alertness — 
'' the old fox " as they called him — across the deep 
river with his nine thousand men to New York, and 
there remained till he was in danger of being sur- 
rounded and entrapped by Howe's powerful forces. 
Then, mercifully abstaining from burning the city, 
he left it without confusion or disaster or over- 
whelming loss, and retired to King's Bridge, Har- 
lem Plains, Fort Washington, and Fort Lee. 

The results for the Americans were negative in 
one sense, and positive in another. The Highlands 
of the Hudson w^ere seized and fortified; the battle 
of Harlem Plains favoured the Continental side, yet 
Fort Washington with its garrison of three thou- 
sand men fell into the hands of the enemy, and 
caused the evacuation of the surrounding country. 
One disaster seemed momentarily linked to another ; 
hundreds deserted or went home on the American 
side : '' they are a set of tatterdemalions," wrote a 
British officer ; " there is hardly a whole pair of 
breeches in an entire regiment." Famine, small- 



294 George Washing-ton 

pox, camp fever, bleeding feet, hunger-bitten coun- 
tenances, wild desire for plunder, uncontrollable 
homesickness were familiar spectacles in all the pa- 
triot camps. Towards the end of the year. General 
Lee, second in command to Washington, was dis- 
gracefully captured and carried off in slippers and 
dressing-gowai — some think by premeditation — by a 
handful of regulars. The army dwindled at one 
time to three or four thousand men, and Cornwallis, 
thinking the war was over, prepared to return to 
England. 

But just at this point, Fortune turned her wheel, 
and the Jersey campaign with its brilliant successes 
changed despair to bright expectation, and made the 
battles of Princeton and Trenton red-letter anniver- 
saries in the history of American independence. 

These engagements, with Washington's crossings 
of the ice-laden Delaware in December of this year, 
exemplified the quick and ceaseless watchfulness of 
the commander, whose activity was only matched 
by the inactivity of the foe. Finding it impossible, 
with his wretched little bands of hungering and 
often disaffected yeomanry, to pursue any but a 
defensive policy, he dealt many a sudden and dis- 
astrous blow at the invaders, decimated their ranks 
by capture, and so disheartened the Howes, that new 
offers of peace, and proclamations of pardon, and 
holding out of the now withered olive branch en- 
sued. Franklin, John Adams, and Rutledge even 
met the British Commission, and much mild palaver 
about returning to their allegiance, unconditional 



The Heart of the Revolution 295 

surrender, etc., passed ineffectually between the 
combatants. 

No peace on such terms was practicable. 

The year 1777 was memorable for many things, 
but for none more than for the humane and eloquent 
utterance of Lord Chatham who, when it was pro- 
posed to use the savages against America, spoke the 
words quoted below. 

It was upon this memorable occasion that he made 
the famous reply to Lord Suffolk, who had said, 
in reference to employing the Indians, that, " we 
were justified in using all the means which God and 
nature had put into our hands." The circumstance 
of Lord Chatham having himself revised this speech 
is an inducement to insert it here in full : 

" I am ashamed," exclaimed Lord Chatham, as he 
rose, " shocked to hear such principles confessed, to 
hear them avowed in this House or in this country; 
principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and un- 
christian. 

'* My Lords, I did not intend to have trespassed 
again on your attention, but I cannot repress my in- 
dignation. I feel myself impelled by every duty. My 
Lords, we are called upon as members of this House, 
as men, as Christian men, to protest against such 
notions, standing near the throne, polluting the ear of 
majesty. That God and nature put into our hands! — 
I know not what idea that Lord may entertain of God 
and nature, but I know that such abominable prin- 
ciples are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. 
What ! attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature 



2q6 George Washington 

to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife, to the 
cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, roasting, and 
eating ; Hterally, my Lords, eating the mangled victims 
of his barbarous battles ! Such horrible notions shock 
every precept of religion, divine and natural, and every 
generous feeling of humanity ; and, my Lords, they 
shock every sentiment of honor ; they shock me as a 
lover of honorable war, and a detester of murderous 
barbarity. 

" These abominable principles, and this more abomi- 
nable avowal of them, demand most decisive indigna- 
tion." ^ 

Washington was earnestly in favour of a standing 
army of forty thousand men who should steadily 
train for battle, and take the place of the vacillating 
mob whose terms of enlistments were continually 
expiring, and whose insubordination, sectional jeal- 
ousies, and disobedience kept him a continual prey 
to anxiety. So high an opinion did Congress have 
of his virtues and patriotism, that they appointed 
him military Dictator for six months, with full 
powers to do as he pleased in the conduct of the cam- 
paign. And never was confidence better placed, or 
in the end better justified. 

The day after the battle of Trenton (Dec. 25th), 
in which a thousand Hessians were captured, their 
leader. Colonel Rales, mortally wounded, and the 
rest sent flying and frightened to Princeton, this 
honour was conferred without any knowledge of 
the victory just gained, at the very time, too, when 

* Lord Brougham, Essay on Chatham, 1777, p. 38. 



The Heart of the Revolution 297 

Horatio Gates and others were planning underhand 
assaults on the reputation of the commander. It is 
pathetically recorded that, at this time, as if frozen 
to insensibility by sufferings and a profound sense 
of responsibility, Washington was never seen to 
smile. Day and night he was pursued by the phan- 
tom of his dissolving army, sorrow over the evacua- 
tion of New York and the surrender of Fort 
Washington, apprehensions for the safety of Phila- 
delphia, which the Congress had already abandoned 
for Baltimore, and intense sympathy with his naked 
and barefooted troops, barely six thousand of whom 
still clung feebly to him. His letters at this time are 
passionate and powerful outcries against the delays 
of Congress, the lack of patriotism in the provinces, 
the insufficiency of men and money ; the thousand 
questions of camp-fire and bivouac, tossed irresist- 
ibly to and fro by his martyred soldiers as they 
froze in the icy December weather, unprotected by 
tents or blankets, shoeless, in rags, rise to the sur- 
face of these plain-spoken epistles, and reveal a state 
of things which amply explains this unsmiling time. 
Delightful, therefore, was the radiant little gleam 
of happiness that came with Trenton, soon to 
broaden into beaming joy over the twin victory of 
Princeton, another of those sudden, Napoleonic 
moves which occasionally varied the compulsory 
" Fabian policy " of the Americans. To watch, to 
wait, to hold his own, to lose no gained advantage, 
to be ever on the qui vive, to pounce suddenly upon 
the dreaming foe, asleep at his Christmas revels, to 



298 George Washing-ton 

inflict a deadly blow and then retire unharmed to 
his leafy lair : such was the only safe course at this 
juncture for the American panther, fighting against 
fearful odds. To risk any more, to risk simply for 
the sake of risking, or to placate a civilian Congress 
a hundred miles away, yet continually interfering, 
would have brought infinite disaster, and soon 
closed the war. 

The true Continental policy, therefore, was the one 
pursued — to wear the British out, to cripple their 
fleet by swarms of swift privateers, flying in and 
out every cove and inlet, to capture big and little 
bands of marauders in detail, to hem in, cut off, 
starve out if possible, to hang like wasps on flank 
and rear and sting to death man by man. 

And the event, four years from now, proved the 
wisdom of this policy which, under the circum- 
stances, was the only one practicable. 

Small successes like these — small in one sense, 
large in another — filled the land with enthusiasm, 
checked the contagion of desertion, and again called 
forth the public thanks of Congress. With every 
advantage of men, money, artillery, and mercenaries, 
the invaders accomplished nothing; and Washing- 
ton, profiting by their lethargy, went into winter 
quarters at Morristown, preparing to rest and re- 
cruit his forces for the summer campaign. The 
swiftness of his down-rush on Trenton and Prince- 
ton, the celerity and secrecy of his movements 
everywhere in upper Jersey, and his personal per- 
suasiveness and popularity among the troops, 



The Heart of the Revolution 2qq 

bespoke him a dangerous foe and vexed the very 
soul of Cornwalhs and Lord Howe. Incredible as 
it may seem, nothing was done by either army until 
May, a most welcome rest for Washington, a most 
inexcusable loss of time for Howe. Washington 
lay vigilant in the hills, watching every movement 
of the enemy, cheered by the presence of his devoted 
wife, studying with his aides the new plan of cam- 
paign, writing volumes of dispatches to Congress, 
to the governors of the different States, to General 
Schuyler at Albany, to Benjamin Harrison, Richard 
Henry Lee, and other influential personal friends at 
Philadelphia, to friends and kinspeople in his be- 
loved Virginia, letters frankly full of his hopes and 
fears. 

The American Commission abroad had at length 
aroused the interest of France, and five thousand 
muskets and stores of ammunition arrived to cheer 
the Americans. Foreign officers began to flock to 
the shores of the New World, and entangle Con- 
gress in curious and annoying questions of rank, 
pay, appointments, and commissions. Many of 
these were noble and magnanimous souls — Kos- 
ciuszko, Pulaski, LaFayette, De Kalb, and, a little 
later, Steuben, De Grasse, and Rochambeau, are 
noble names for any nation to enroll in its legion 
of honour, but particularly so for America at this 
forlorn and often hopeless time. Seeds of freedom 
had been scattered broadcast all over Europe by 
Locke and '' Junius," Bolingbroke and Voltaire, 
John Wilkes and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and these 



300 Georg^e Washing-ton 

seeds had germinated plentifully in Poland, in 
Prussia, in France, and in England, bearing as their 
noble fruit the band of devoted patriots just enu- 
merated. 

'' Freedom shrieked when Kosciuszko fell," wrote 
the poet Campbell in a memorable line which has 
enbalmed the gallant Lithuanian who came over to 
help Washington, and survived the Revolution 
many years. Innumerable streets, public squares, 
towns, counties, and monuments perpetuate, in the 
United States, the name of the gentle and gracious 
marquis who, at twenty, leaves his beautiful wife 
and vast possessions to serve, to starve, finally to 
triumph, with Washington. Steuben, amid the hor- 
rors of Valley Forge and the rest of that nightmare 
winter, first taught the Americans what regular dis- 
cipline was. To Americans, Poland is not only the 
land of great novelists and exquisite musicians, it 
is the land of Pulaski, who fell nobly fighting for 
American freedom; and, but for the timely aid of 
the countrymen of D'Estaing, De Grasse, and Ro- 
chambeau, American independence would probably 
never have been achieved. 

As the long months of 1777 uncoiled themselves 
from the *' loom of Time," they gradually wove 
their substance into a fabric of mingled light and 
shade, of gloom and gladness, that soon became 
characteristic of the whole w^ar. The beginning of 
the year was all light for the Americans. Then the 
long and much-needed hibernation at Morristown 
and Middlebrook ensued. Mid-summer revealed 



The Heart of the Revolution 301 

alarming activity of Burgoyne, Riedesel, Breymann, 
and Carleton in the vicinity of Lake Champlain, 
where St. Clair was forced to abandon Ticonderoga, 
Arnold with his little fleet was swept from the 
water, and seven or eight thousand regulars, 
Hessians, Canadians, and Indians, with a huge 
train of artillery and abundant stores, were creeping 
cautiously towards Albany, to form if possible a 
junction with Howe and Clinton, and sweep the 
Hudson with a '' besom of destruction." 

The scheme was well planned, but it did not take 
into proper consideration two all-important factors : 
the treachery of the Indian allies, and the high 
spirit of the New York and New England yeo- 
manry. The Indians were the wind in human form : 
one moment here, the next there ; fickle, inconstant, 
destitute of patriotism or principle, vindictive as 
treacherous, a people of moods, all smiles or frowns 
according to circumstances, actuated by no govern- 
ing thought save need or greed, or vengeance on the 
paleface, be he friend or foe, creatures of impulse 
and impression, totally unreliable in the great issues 
of life. 

The credulous Burgoyne had hundreds of these 
uncertain allies in his pay, and, at the critical mo- 
ment, they deserted him in the dark wood, and con- 
tributed to a catastrophe more fearful than that 
which, in far Virginia, had linked the name of the 
ill-fated Braddock inseparably with the first great 
American tragedy. 

If the Indians were the wind incarnate, the yeo- 



302 George Washing-ton 

manry of this beautifully picturesque region of the 
Adirondacks, the Vermont and Berkshire Hills, and 
the Hudson and Mohawk valleys were a wall, but 
a moving wall here, there, and everywhere where 
danger or honour called, men actuated by the purest 
patriotism, the highest motives, the most unselfish 
devotion, living exemplifications of the fury that 
lies latent in the plough-boy, the hunter, the dweller 
in the lonely forest, the denizen of the river and the 
mountain, when his sweetness is turned to gall, his 
honey to vinegar, and his gay laugh to a sardonic 
grin under the nitric acid of just indignation. 

The strategic blunder of Burgoyne was precisely 
in putting himself superciliously, in an unguarded 
moment, at the mercy of these twin elements. All 
seemed as beautiful as a summer dream to this fan- 
tastic captain — more skilled in scribbling tasteless 
plays than in commanding armies — as he started 
gaily forth down the lovely shores of Champlain, 
drums beating, banners flying, his flotilla cleaving 
the silver waters of the lake, all as bright and fan- 
ciful as a Venetian festa. Travellers know the 
delightful beauty of this region in midsummer — the 
shadowy woods, the crystal lakes sunk deep in the 
primeval forests, the dashing mountain streams, the 
lordly mountains themselves, with their splendid 
verdure of fir and beech and birch and exuberant 
fern, — each with its musical Indian name hanging 
like a tassel to it : now all peace and rich landscape 
beauty. But then — 

Into this realm of elves and fairies, of goblins and 



The Heart of the Revolution 303 

Indians, where every tree would soon change to a 
flame of cannon or a flash of flint-lock — into this 
region, dragging his heavy brass cannon, his long 
train of baggage waggons, his sappc'-s and miners 
and pickets, the cavalcade even accompanied by la- 
dies of rank, advanced the incautious invader, until 
as the months from July to October moved on, with 
now and then a brilliant small success, such as the re- 
capture of this much-captured Ticonderoga, he 
reached the neighbourhood of Saratoga. 

A Congressional cabal meanwhile had placed 
General Gates over the head of the gallant Schuyler, 
just as the fruits of Schuyler's long and patient toil 
were about to be gathered. Eleven thousand men 
had now assembled in the various American camps 
around Lake George, Stillwater, Saratoga, and 
Bemis's Heights. In August, a brigade of these led 
by the sturdy Stark fell on the British at Bennington, 
Vermont, and defeated them, crippling Burgoyne 
and causing a panic in his camp. It was one of those 
scares that cause people to " realise " things — a 
smart sense of danger, the perils of advancing too 
far from one's base into an enemy's country, the 
inadequacy of one's resources, the valour and deter- 
mination of the foe. Bennington was an object- 
lesson just two months ahead of Saratoga, but it 
seems to have taught Burgoyne nothing. One thing 
especially he never '' realised " : that New England 
was not Pennsylvania or lower New York ; loyalists 
were few and far between; every man was as true 
as steel, and the woods swarmed with keen-eyed 



304 Georg-e Washington 

marksmen — men born to the gun, inured to hard- 
ship, full of zeal for the cause, whose hearts, once 
soft for the old country, had hardened into rock and 
were possessed with the fixed idea to be free. En- 
trapped, so to speak, in his own meshes, caught in 
a cordon of foes that could not bend or be broken, 
boastfully proclaiming that he would eat his Christ- 
mas dinner at Albany, this second Miles Gloriosus 
actually fulfilled his threat, and really ate the 
Christmas turkey among the " Mynheers " but as — 
a captive ! 

On the 17th of October, 1777, — almost the iden- 
tical date to assume, four years hence, a world-wide 
celebrity at Yorktown, — the conqueror, distressed, 
bewildered, haggard with disappointed ambition, 
and, doubtless, heartily ashamed of himself for the 
part he had played, ingloriously capitulated — he, his 
officers and army of six thousand men, seven thou- 
sand stand of arms, great store of artillery and 
provisions, Hessians, Indians, and all, wiped at one 
fell blow from the face of the earth. 

This splendid achievement was largely due to the 
heroic temper and exertions of Benedict Arnold and 
General Schuyler, two men grossly slighted by Con- 
gress, but distinguished by Washington with every 
mark of respect and consideration. Arnold began 
his career as a true patriot, filled with zeal for the 
cause, naturally gifted as a leader, imperious, high- 
strung, and indomitable: Montreal, Quebec, Lake 
Champlain were strewn with his achievements. He 
thirsted for glory but he also thirsted for official 



The Heart of the Revolution 305 

recognition. This was systematically denied him, 
and his ardent nature, soured by repeated disap- 
pointments, by continual snubs, by the elevation of 
meaner men over his head, soured, darkened, grew 
embittered, at last drank of the poison cup of over- 
powering temptation — and fell. 

The crown of his humiliation was complete when 
Gates deprived him of his commission, and ordered 
him off the field of Bemis's Heights, omitting his 
name entirely in the account of Burgoyne's sur- 
render. 

" Burgoyne and some of his principal officers met 
with a reception in the American camp which they little 
dreamed of. Gates behaved toward them with the ut- 
most courtesy ; but the generosity of Schuyler, who 
was present at the surrender, and whose property had 
been wickedly destroyed, equalled anything to be found 
in the annals of chivalry. The Baroness Riedesel, who 
has left, in her Memoirs, a most charming and graphic 
picture of the scenes in which she participated in this 
country, and particularly in this campaign, describes 
the treatment she received at his hands with great 
pathos. She says, that when she drew near the 
American tents, a good-looking man came towards her, 
helped her children from the caleche in which she rode, 
and kissed and caressed them, at the same time telling 
her not to be the least alarmed. Afterward, when all 
the generals were about to dine with Gates, the same 
gentleman, who she then heard was General Schuyler, 
came to her, and invited her to his own tent, that she 
might not be embarrassed in so large a company, she 
being the only lady among them. He entertained her 



3o6 George Washing^ton 

with many delicacies, and then gave her a cordial 
invitation to visit him at his house in Albany, where 
he expected Burgoyne would be his guest. She 
describes her reception there by Mrs. Schuyler and her 
daughters, as being like that of a friend instead of an 
enemy. ' They treated us,' she said, ' with the most 
marked attention and politeness, as they did General 
Burgoyne, who had caused General Schuyler's beauti- 
fully finished house to be burned. In fact, they be- 
haved like persons of exalted minds, who determined 
to bury all recollections of their own injuries in the 
contemplation of our misfortunes.' General Burgoyne 
was struck with General Schuyler's generosity, and 
said to him : ' You show me great kindness, though I 
have done you much injury.' — * That was the fate of 
war,' replied the brave man, ' let us say no more 
about it.' 

*' General Schuyler was detained at Saratoga when 
Burgoyne and his suite departed for Albany. He 
wrote to his wife, requesting her to give the British 
general the best reception in her power. ' He sent an 
aid-de-camp to conduct me to Albany,' said Burgoyne, 
in a speech in the British House of Commons, ' in 
order, as he expressed it, to procure better quarters 
than a stranger might be able to find. That gentleman 
(Colonel Richard Varick) conducted me to a very 
elegant house, and, to my great surprise, presented me 
to Mrs. Schuyler and her family. In that house I re- 
mained during my whole stay in Albany, with a table 
of more than twenty covers for me and my friends, 
and every other demonstration of hospitality.' " ^ 

^ Lossing, Washington and the American Republic, vol. ii, 
P- 537. 



The Heart of the Revolution 307 

While the pendulum swung thus high in the 
North, and began to mark October as the " most im- 
memorial month " of American independence, it 
swung wofully low in the South where the Com- 
mander-m-chief, himself, found the army '' a great 
chaos," as he wrote, from which he was trying to 
evolve some order. The hot months had started 
Burgoyne and Howe from their lairs almost simul- 
taneously, and, like swarms of bees, their forces 
fastened on the extremities of the confederacy and 
threatened to extinguish it. Sir William Howe, 
baffling spies and scouts, appeared suddenly with 
two hundred sail off the Delaware capes. By 
September ist, he had penetrated two hundred miles 
up Chesapeake Bay, and landed eighteen thousand 
troops near the Elk River. As this army headed 
towards Philadelphia, it was hung upon flank and 
rear by '' Light Horse " Harry Lee, Generals Sul- 
livan, Wayne, and Greene, and such few thousands 
of troops as were present from day to day. " Today 
I have a full army, tomorrow none," complained 
Washington. In little more than three weeks after 
landing at Elk River, Howe marched victoriously 
into Philadelphia (Sept. 26th), though momentarily 
checked at Brandywine, thirteen days before. 

Brandywine, like Germantown, was one of those 
victorious defeats which taught the Americans so 
much, which evoked medals and thanks from Con- 
gress, lifted the Fabian policy into a science of nega- 
tive possibilities, inspired in the British respect for 
their antagonists, and showed the folly of attempt- 



3o8 Georg-e Washing-ton 

ing to subdue millions of free people with twenty- 
five thousand regulars and a few thousand hireling 
Hessians. " There are 60,000 babes born every 
year in America and our commerce is. worth 
25,000,000 dollars annually," exclaimed Franklin, 
always seizing the practical side of things. 

And the same philosopher, on hearing of Howe's 
entry into Philadelphia, wrote, '' Philadelphia has 
taken Howe, not Howe Philadelphia." 

Hannibal at Capua could not, indeed, have been 
more effectively taken than Howe in the peaceful 
Quaker City. 

The British now had two costly bases a hundred 
miles apart, two vast military camps to guard and 
fortify, two fleets to maintain, a divided force and 
plan of campaign to carry out, the two most popu- 
lous cities in the country to defend against a wily 
and untiring foe. The character of this foe was well 
described by LaFayette : 

" Eleven thousand men but tolerably armed, and 
still worse clad, presented a singular spectacle ; in this 
parti-colored and often naked state, the best dresses 
were hunting-shirts of brown linen. Their tactics 
were equally irregular. They were arranged without 
regard to size, excepting that the smallest men were in 
the front rank. With all this, these were good-looking 
soldiers, conducted by zealous officers." 

Scarcely had the invaders settled down in the 
Tory city, for Philadelphia was substantially Tory 
at that time, and in the very act of drinking toasts 



The Heart of the Revolution 309 

to King George and confusion to the Continental 
Congress over their brilUant success, when the 
loving-cup of congratulation was embittered by the 
news from Burgoyne. Thus the pendulum righted 
itself and swung up heavily in favour of the Ameri- 
cans. 

The capture of Philadelphia seemed a great suc- 
cess, but the effect was as nothing compared with 
the capture of Burgoyne. 

" The surrender of Burgoyne and his army was an 
event of infinite importance to the republican cause 
beyond its immediate results. Hitherto, during the 
war, the preponderance of successes had been on the 
side of the British ; and there were doubtful minds and 
trembling hearts everywhere among the true friends 
of the cause, to whom the idea of deliverance of the 
colonists appeared almost chimerical. 

" The events on the Brandywine were not calculated 
to inspire hope, even in the most hopeful ; and all eyes 
were turned anxiously to the army of the North. Every 
breath of rumor from Saratoga was listened to with 
eagerness ; and when the victory was certified, a shout 
of triumph went up all over the land — from the fur- 
row, and workshops, and marts of commerce, from 
the pulpit, from provincial halls of legislation, from 
partisan camps, and from the shattered ranks of the 
commander-in-chief of the American armies, at White- 
marsh. The bills of Congress rose twenty per cent in 
value ; capital came forth from its hiding-places ; the 
militia of the country were inspirited, and more hope- 
ful hearts everywhere prevailed. 

" The Congress, overjoyed by the event, forgot their 



31 o George Washington 

own dignity; and when Major Wilkinson, Gates' 
bearer of despatches to that body, appeared at their 
door, he was admitted to the legislative floor, and 
allowed verbally to proclaim in the ear of that august 
assembly : ' The whole British army have laid down 
their arms at Saratoga ; our own, full of vigor and 
courage, expect your orders ; it is for your wisdom to 
decide where the country may still have need of their 
services.' In the ecstacy of the hour the commander- 
in-chief was overlooked and almost forgotten ; and the 
insult of the elated Gates, in omitting to send his 
despatches to his chief, was allowed to pass unrebuked. 

*' Beyond the Atlantic the effect of this victory was 
also very important. In the British Parliament it gave 
strength to the opposition, and struck the ministerial 
party with dismay. ' You may swell every expense 
and every effort, still more extravagantly,' thundered 
Chatham, as he leaned upon his crutches and poured 
forth a torrent of eloquent invective and denunciation. 
' You may pile and accumulate every assistance you can 
buy or borrow ; traffic and barter with every little piti- 
ful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to 
the shambles of a foreign power ; your efforts are for 
ever vain and impotent ; doubly so from this mercenary 
aid on which you rely, for it irritates to an incurable 
resentment the minds of your enemies. To overrun 
with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, 
devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of 
hireling cruelty ! ' . . . 

" By this victory, unaided as the republicans were 
by any foreign help or encouragement of much impor- 
tance, their prowess was placed in the most favorable 
light before the eyes of continental Europe. France 



The Heart of the Revolution 311 

now listened with respect to the overtures for aid made 
by the American commissioners. Spain, the states- 
general of Holland, the prince of Orange, Catharine of 
Russia, and even Ganganelli (Pope Clement the Four- 
teenth), all of whom feared and hated England be- 
cause of her increasing puissance in arms, commerce, 
and diplomacy, thought and spoke kindly of the 
struggling Americans. And on the sixth of February 
following, France acknowledged the independence of 
the United States, and entered into a treaty of friend- 
ship and commerce, and an alliance offensive and de- 
fensive, with them." ^ 

^Lossing, Washington and the American Republic, vol. ii, 
p. 539. 



CHAPTER XVI 

ON TO YORKTOWN 

TWENTY-TWO miles northwest of Philadel- 
phia lies a lovely and peaceful little valley, 
over which now the very spirit of tranquillity broods. 
The green hills on either side are embowered in 
luxuriant verdure; wreaths of delicate blue smoke 
curl heavenward from many an old-fashioned stone 
chimney; rich farms, ploughed and cultivated by 
a sturdy *' Dutch " yeomanry, spread their orchards 
and their fields of grain in every direction; dairies 
and vegetable gardens vary the landscape with their 
quaint architecture and many-coloured expanses of 
green in every shade; picturesque country roads 
wind in and out the curves of the hills ; rivulets and 
springs gladden the verdure with their presence, and 
the wild wood, full of birds and butterflies in the 
summer season, everywhere gives evidence of a civ- 
ilisation two centuries and a half old. 

This is one of the most memorable spots in the 
United States, the spot where, in the awful winter 
of 1778, the patriot army, eleven thousand strong, 
huddled together in winter quarters, and strove to 
keep soul and body together until spring should open 
and deliver them from a Dante's Inferno of ice and 
snow. Here they froze and starved, suffered and 

312 



On to Yorktown 313 

died, martyred by alternate hopes and fears, almost 
within sound of the bells of Philadelphia where 
plenty reigned, bells which to them were more like 
death-bells than the symbols of God's mercy and 
loving-kindness to men. 

Acres and acres of the slopes and hillsides, now 
so beautiful and calm with the peace of more than 
a hundred years, then lay thickly strewn with log 
cabins roofed with leaves and branches, cabins 12 
by 14 feet, pointed with clay or mud, holding twelve 
soldiers each. Washington himself, lynx-eyed in 
everything that concerned the comfort of his army, 
issued the most minute directions for the construc- 
tion of the huts, offered bounties for the best and 
speediest built, and on every occasion, wherever 
there was the least reason for it, composed and pro- 
claimed encouraging bulletins to the soldiers, bid- 
ding them be of good cheer, acquit themselves like 
men, and cling tenaciously to their rights as mem- 
bers of free and independent States. 

It seemed like the very Valley of the Shadow of 
Death, and the winter closed in over the American 
Army, sombre, ominous, and despairing. 

'' I am now convinced beyond a doubt," wrote 
Washington, " that, unless some great and capital 
change suddenly takes place in that line [the commis- 
sary's department], this army must inevitably be re- 
duced to one or other of these three things: starve, 
dissolve, or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence in 
the best manner they can." 

Two foreign observers, the Marquis de LaFayette 



314 Georg-e Washington 

and Baron von Steuben, testify as follows of the 
army: 

" The unfortunate soldiers were in want of every- 
thing; they had neither coats, hats, shirts, nor shoes; 
their feet and legs froze till they became black, and it 
was often necessary to amputate them. From want of 
money, they could neither obtain provisions nor any 
means of transport; the colonels were often reduced 
to two rations, and sometimes even to one. The army 
frequently remained whole days without provisions, 
and the patient endurance of both soldiers and officers 
was a miracle which each moment served to renew. 
But the sight of their misery prevented new engage- 
ments : it was almost impossible to levy recruits ; it was 
easy to desert into the interior of the country." ^ 

Steuben says: 

" The arms at Valley Forge were in a horrible condi- 
tion, covered with rust, half of them without bayonets, 
many from which a single shot could not be fired. 
The pouches were quite as bad as the arms. A great 
many of the carbines, fowling-pieces, and rifles were 
to be seen in the same company. The description of 
the dress is most easily given. The men were 
literally naked, some of them in the fullest extent of 
the word. The officers who had coats, had them of 
every color and make. I saw officers, at a grand 
parade at Valley Forge, mounting guard in a sort of 
dressing-gown, made of an old blanket or woollen 
bed-cover. With regard to their military discipline, 
I may safely say no such thing existed." 

^Memoirs of LaFayette. 



On to Yorktown 315 

It is these men, whose " incomparable patience " 
the Commander praises in warmest words, hearts of 
gold, able, each man, to reply as Joseph Reed when 
approached by the foreign Peace Commission with 
a bribe : '' I am not worth purchasing, but such as 
I am King George has not money enough to buy 
me!" 

Yet this inflexible patriotism was set in a sur- 
rounding of treachery, lukewarmness, and intrigue. 
'' Ah these detestable Tories ! " exclaims Elkanah 
Watson in his diary; and these were the molluscs 
rather than men who, in a land literally flowing with 
milk and honey, sat and smiled while the heroic 
camp at Valley Forge sat and starved. '' Starve, 
dissolve or disperse," wrote Washington to Con- 
gress, must be the inevitable fate of the army, often 
destitute of food for days together, if a proper com- 
missariat were not organised. 

A burst of cheery radiance interrupted the gloom 
when, in May, with heartiest thanksgiving, the army 
celebrated the news of the treaty of alliance and 
commerce with France signed the February previous. 
The adventurer Lee, with his heart even then hatch- 
ing treason, was exchanged for the captive British 
General Prescott, who, a few months before, had 
been captured and carried off in his night clothes 
from his Rhode Island quarters, in a manner almost 
identical with the capture of Lee. Received with the 
most affectionate warmth by Washington, Lee was 
put in command of the right wing of the army. 



3i6 George Washington 

Of Washington at this time, a foreigner in the 
camp wrote : 

''General Washington received the Baron [Steuben] 
with great cordiahty, and to me he showed much con- 
descending attention. I cannot describe the impression 
that the first sight of that great man made upon me. 
I could not keep my eyes from that imposing counte- 
nance — grave, yet not severe; affable, without famil- 
iarity. Its predominant expression was calm dignity, 
through which you could trace the strong feelings of 
the patriot, and discern the father as well as the com- 
mander of his soldiers. I have never seen a picture 
that represents him to me as I saw him at Valley 
Forge, and during the campaigns in which I had the 
honor to follow him. Perhaps that expression was 
beyond the skill of the painter ; but while I live it will 
remain impressed on my memory. I had frequent op- 
portunities of seeing him, as it was my duty to ac- 
company the Baron when he dined with him, which 
was sometimes twice or thrice in the same week. We 
visited him also in the evening, when Mrs. Washington 
was at headquarters. We were in a manner domesti- 
cated in the family." 

The terrors of that winter were increased, for 
Washington, by the publication of spurious letters 
attributing treasonable sentiments to him, and by the 
machinations of the Conway Cabal to remove him 
from his high position. 

Washington repudiated the letters, attributed to 
John Randolph, last royal Attorney-general of Vir- 
ginia, with scorn, and the shameless intrigues of 




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On to Yorktown 317 

Gates, Conway and the gang of adventurers about 
them, fell to the ground. 

The Capuan luxury of Philadelphia indeed — or 
the monumental folly of a civilian ministry, three 
thousand miles away, in attempting to direct mili- 
tary movements in a land totally unfamiliar to them 
— proved too much for the British, and caused a 
dramatic turn of events on the i8th of June, 1778. 
On that day, the news first burst on the astonished 
camp at Valley Forge, that Sir Henry Clinton with 
ten thousand troops had slipped anchor, so to speak, 
crossed the Delaware with a huge train of waggons 
and artillery, and was scudding away in hot haste 
over the plains of Jersey in full retreat for New 
York. 

Now, the happy traveller skims over the ninety 
odd miles between the two great cities in ninety 
minutes. Then, marching with all possible speed, 
it took the invaders from June 18th to June 30th to 
reach Sandy Hook and find themselves under the 
protection of the fleet in New York Harbour. On 
the way, ten days after they started, the British suf- 
fered a disastrous defeat at Monmouth Court House, 
where they were fiercely attacked by the Americans, 
and where the ambiguous conduct of Lee, in order- 
ing the Americans without reason to retreat, 
strengthened the prevailing opinion that he was a 
traitor. The day was saved by the vigilance of 
Washington and his Generals Greene, Lord Stir- 
ling, LaFayette, and Cadwallader, who, perceiving 
the confusion, rallied the troops, flung them power- 



31 8 Georg-e Washington 

fully against the enemy, and, by twilight of this 
famous Sunday, had the foe in swift retreat towards 
New York. 

It was on this occasion that the Marquis La- 
Fayette reports the historic scene between Washing- 
ton and Lee : 

" The conviction that Lee was a TRAITOR, and 
that this retreat was the first bitter fruit of his treason, 
now flashed upon the mind of Washington. Already 
the belief that he was untrue, and a dangerous man in 
the army, had been forced upon the consideration of 
many officers ; but, until the previous evening, the 
generous heart of the commander-in-chief would not 
harbor such a suspicion. Late at night, the Reverend 
David Griffiths, a Welshman, and chaplain of the third 
Virginia regiment, had repaired to headquarters, and 
warned the chief, in presence of Hamilton, Harrison, 
and Fitzgerald, not to employ General Lee in com- 
manding the advance on the ensuing morning. Wash- 
ington received the warning doubtingly; when the 
reverend gentleman, on retiring, observed, * I am not 
permitted to say more at present, but your excellency 
will remember my warning voice to-morrow, in the 
battle.' 

'' Now that warning voice, Lee's opposition to 
attacking Clinton at all, and his changefulness respect- 
ing the command of the advance, all combined to make 
Washington feel that Lee had ordered this retreat for 
the purpose of marring his plans, and disgracing him 
by the loss of a battle, so as to fulfil the traitor's own 
predictions of its failure. It was under this impression, 
acting upon a most intense nature, that Washington, 



On to Yorktown 319 

as he was pushing forward, after ordering the flying 
officers to form their corps in his rear, met Lee. The 
chief was terribly exasperated, and, riding up to Lee, 
he exclaimed, in a tone of absolute fierceness, ' What 
is the meaning of all this, sir ? ' Lee hesitated for a 
moment; when Washington, with furious aspect and 
more furious words, again demanded, ' Sir, I desire to 
know what is the reason of all this disorder and con- 
fusion ? ' 

" The fiery Lee, stung more by Washington's man- 
ner than his words, made an angry reply; when the 
enraged chief, no longer able to control his feelings, 
called him a * damned poltroon.' Other bitter words 
passed quickly between the two generals ; and, during 
that brief interview, the ardent Hamilton, who also 
remembered the chaplain's warning, drew his sword, 
and exclaimed : ' Your excellency and this army are 
betrayed ; and the moment has arrived when every true 
friend of America and her cause must be ready to die 
in their defence ! ' 

** But there was no time for altercation. The enemy, 
in pursuit of the fugitives, were advancing in full force. 
Wheeling his horse, Washington hastened to the rear, 
rallied a large portion of the broken regiments, and, 
by the well-directed fire of some fieldpieces which he 
had ordered to be placed in battery upon an eminence, 
the British were checked. Washington's presence 
inspired the troops with courage, and order was soon 
brought out of confusion. 

" Having made all arrangements with great pre- 
cision and despatch, the commander-in-chief rode back 
to Lee in a calmer state of mind, and, pointing to the 
rallied troops, inquired, ' Will you, sir, command in 



320 George Washington 

that place ? ' 'I will ! ' eagerly exclaimed Lee. 
' Then/ said Washington, ' I expect you to check the 
enemy immediately.' 'Your command shall be obeyed,' 
responded Lee, ' and I will not be the first to leave 
the field.' 

" Back to the main army Washington now hurried, 
and with wonderful despatch formed the battalions in 
order for action, upon the eminences westward of a 
small morass which lay between them and the enemy. 
Lord Stirling was placed in command of the left wing, 
and General Greene took position on his right. Sharp 
fighting soon occurred. Lee's troops, exhausted by 
fatigue and the intense heat, were ordered to take 
position in the rear, near Englishtown, and their com- 
mander was directed to assemble the scattered fugi- 
tives there. 

** The battle soon became general, and the British 
sustained a great loss in the death of Colonel Monck- 
ton. He was killed while leading his grenadiers against 
Wayne, who, with some artillery, had taken a strong 
position. His columns, terribly shattered at the same 
time, recoiled. The entire British line soon gave way, 
and the conflict ceased." ^ 

Later, Lee was court-martialed and sentenced to 
suspension from the army for one year. 

General Arnold entered Philadelphia with a force 
of Americans, and once again the cause loomed up 
into light and cheerfulness, " obfuscated," as Lee 
expressed it, by the fall of Savannah in the South 
towards the end of December. 

*Lossing, Washington and the American Republic, vol. ii, 
p. 623. 



On to Yorktown 321 

Congress at once moved back to the wealthy 
Quaker City, where immediately the busy pens of 
the idlers begin to ply, diaries are kept, and pen- 
pictures of the men and times are abundantly 
painted. Here is Thacher's portrait of Washington : 

*' The personal appearance of our Commander in 
Chief, is that of the perfect gentleman and accom- 
plished warrior. He is remarkably tall, full six feet, 
erect and well proportioned. The strength and pro- 
portion of his joints and muscles, appear to be com- 
mensurate with the pre-eminent powers of his mind. 
The serenity of his countenance, and majestic grace- 
fulness of his deportment, impart a strong impres- 
sion of tha<t dignity and grandeur, which are his 
peculiar characteristics, and no one can stand in his 
presence without feeling the ascendency of his mind, 
and associating with his countenance the idea of 
wisdom, philanthropy, magnanimity, and patriotism. 
There is a fine symmetry in the features of his face 
indicative of a benign and dignified spirit. His nose 
is straight and his eyes inclined to blue. He wears 
his hair in a becoming cue, and from his forehead 
it is turned back and powdered in a manner which 
adds to the military air of his appearance. He dis- 
plays a native gravity, but devoid of all appearance 
of ostentation. His uniform dress is a blue coat, with 
two brilliant epaulettes, buff colored under clothes, 
and a three cornered hat with a black cockade. He is 
constantly equipped with an elegant small sword, boots 
and spurs, in readiness to mount his noble charger." 

The condition of the currency rendered the men 
of 1 778- 1 779 almost desperate. In May of the lat- 



322 Georg-e Washington 

ter year, loo specie dollars were worth 12 15 paper 
dollars : " a wagon-load of money will scarcely pur- 
chase a wagon-load of provisions," wrote an eminent 
observer. The General confided in Benjamin Har- 
rison as follows : 

" If I was to be called upon to draw a picture of the 
times and of Men, from what I have seen, and heard, 
and in part know, I should in one word say that idle- 
ness, dissipation and extravagance seems to have laid 
fast hold of most of them. — That speculation — pecula- 
tion — and an insatiable thirst for riches seems to have 
got the better of every other consideration and almost 
of every order of Men. — That party disputes and 
personal quarrels are the great business of the day 
whilst the momentous concerns of an empire — a great 
and accumulated debt — ruined finances — depreciated 
money — and want of credit (which in their conse- 
quences is the want of everything) are but secondary 
considerations and postponed from day to day — from 
week to week as if our affairs wear the most prom- 
ising aspect — after drawing this picture, which from 
my Soul I believe to be a true one, I need not repeat 
to you that I am alarmed and wish to see my Country- 
men roused. '^ 

The endless circling around New York and Phila- 
delphia strikes almost a humorous chord in the 
heart of the leader at this time, when he writes to 
General Nelson : 

" It is not a Httle pleasing, nor less wonderful to 
contemplate, that after two years' manoeuvring and 
undergoing the strangest vicissitudes, that perhaps 



On to Yorktown 323 

ever attended any one contest since the creation, both 
armies are brought back to the very point they set 
out from, and that which was the offending party in 
the beginning is now reduced to the use of the spade 
and pickaxe for defence." 

But the situation on the whole, when the army 
went into winter quarters at Middlebrook and Eliza- 
bethtown (1779), was rather encouraging than 
otherwise. 

Called to Philadelphia to confer with Congress 
and its War Commission, on plans of campaign for 
the ensuing spring and summer, Washington, so far 
from being found the solemn and unapproachable 
chief, is present now and then at balls and festivities 
given in his honour, casts off care, dances three 
hours hand-running with the wife of General Greene, 
and joins willingly in the entertainments offered to 
M. Gerard, the French envoy, and other distin- 
guished foreigners. 

General Knox, in a letter of February 28th, wrote 
to his brother : 

''We had at the Park (of artillery) on the i8th a 
most genteel entertainment given by self and officers. 
Everybody allows it to be the first of the kind ever 
exhibited in this State at least. We had above seventy 
ladies, all of the first ton in the State, and between 
three and four hundred gentlemen. We danced all 
night — an elegant room, the illuminating, fireworks, 
etc., were more than pretty. It was to celebrate the 
alliance between France and America." 



324 George Washington 

Franklin's daughter writes to her father: 

'' I have lately been several times invited abroad 
with the General and Mrs. Washington. He always 
inquires after you in the most affectionate manner, 
and speaks of you highly. We danced at Mrs. Pow- 
ell's your birth-day [January 6, (O. S.) 1706], or 
night I should say, in company together, and he told 
me it was the anniversary of his marriage [January 6, 
(N. S.) 1759] ; it was just twenty years that night." 

The Hudson Highlands, White Plains, West 
Point, and other defensible spots on the route were 
eagerly inspected by the General and his engineers, 
and eligible points were rapidly selected for fortifi- 
cations. The feeble operations of the French fleet 
under an incompetent leader, its dispersion by a 
storm at Newport, and its inability to get into New 
York Harbour with its eighteen ships and four thou- 
sand men, disappointed the general expectation in 
the efficiency of French aid at this time, and caused 
distrust and fear. 

But the months of 1779, wonderfully mild as 
contrasted with those of 1778, slipped away favour- 
ably for the patriots : they were filled with guerilla 
skirmishes, feints on the part of Lord Howe's fleet 
at New York, and inconsequent manoeuvres here 
and there on the Hudson on the part of both armies. 

Time wore on. 

A war of outrage now began to be waged against 
defenceless towns and villages in Virginia, Rhode 
Island, and Connecticut ; churches, school-houses, un- 
defended homes of women and children were scathed 



On to Yorktown 325 

by fire, and a deep and incurable resentment burned 
in the blood of the patriots as they heard of these 
outrages, far away in the distant camps. 

To add to the horrors of this moment, the Indians 
of the Six Nations and of the Mingo and Ohio 
tribes began a series of atrocities which Campbell, in 
his Gertrude of Wyoming, has immortalised in most 
musical verse. Worn out w^ith these massacres, 
Washington despatched General Sullivan with six- 
teen hundred men against the Iroquois, and the fair 
waters of the Susquehanna and the lovely vale of 
the Genesee soon bespoke his avenging arm. 

The year 1 780 opened with the Americans in win- 
ter quarters, partly at West Point, partly at Morris- 
town, New Jersey, where cruel sufferings, in 
consequence of deep snows and a lack of bread and 
meat, reduced the riotous soldiers almost to rebellion. 

The new French Minister, M. Luzerne (who had 
succeeded M. Gerard), wrote to the Count de Ver- 
gennes : 

" I have had many conversations with General 
Washington, some of which have continued for three 
hours. It is impossible for me briefly to communicate 
the fund of intelligence, which I have derived from 
him, but I shall do it in my letters as occasions shall 
present themselves. I will now say only, that I have 
formed as high an opinion of the powers of his mind, 
his moderation, his patriotism, and his virtues, as I 
had before from common report conceived of his mil- 
itary talents and of the incalculable services he has 
rendered to his country." 



326 Georg^e Washing-ton 

A stream of light came over sea with the Marquis 
de LaFayette who, after a considerable absence 
abroad, now returned with the joyful intelligence 
that Count Rochambeau, with a large French fleet 
and six thousand men, were about to arrive at New- 
port in aid of the Americans. 

The puzzling purpose of the British became mani- 
fest towards the end of the year when, falling into 
another of those strange blunders so characteristic 
of this war, they resolved on a Southern campaign, 
hundreds of miles away from their permanent base 
at New York, and sent 7500 men under Admiral 
Arbuthnot, Sir Henry Clinton, and Lord Cornwallis, 
in December, 1779, and April, 1780, to capture 
Charleston. 

Naturally, this poor little town fell into the power 
of the large attacking force : General Lincoln sur- 
rendered it ; but it proved one of those ambiguous 
gifts of which the War for Independence reveals 
many ; the possession of it simply beguiled the foe 
into the conceit that a deadly blow had been inflicted, 
and that the dragon had been cut in two. Boston, 
New York, Philadelphia, Savannah, Charleston, 
successively suffered decapitation at the hands of 
the invader — and yet the hydra was as many-headed 
as ever! 

In fact, the fate of the two Indies is the most 
marvellous object-lesson in all English history. The 
Empire of the East, sovereign in its contempt for 
the West, rigid in its forms, rotten in civilisation, 
enervated to the last degree by fantastic forms of 



On to Yorktown 327 

luxury, fell an easy prey to the powerful East India 
Company which, in 1600, began its singular career 
there, to end with the sensational presence and ex- 
ploits of Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. The 
gorgeous fabric of Indian monarchy crumbled at a 
touch — '' such stuff as dreams are made on " — and 
its endless millions bowed almost thankfully beneath 
an alien yoke. 

The miniature Empire of the West, on the other 
hand, was peopled by England's own children, bone 
of her bone and blood of her blood : a handful of 
hardy Anglo-Saxons whose temper and training 
were the same as those of the invader, but a temper 
and training instinct with force and pride, invincible 
in character, intelligent beyond the conception of 
contemporaries, filled with a conscience that burnt 
like a flame, and directed by a purpose to do or die 
in the cause of right. 

England did not know her own children, or she 
would never have ventured on this war. 

The weakness of Congress as a federal body, 
however, caused Washington many an anxious mo- 
ment : the danger of disintegration was all the time 
imminent, and he wrote urgent letters on the subject. 

In a letter to Fielding Lewis he says: 

'' I give it decisively as my opinion — that unless 
the States will content themselves with a full and well- 
chosen representation in Congress and vest that body 
with absolute powers in all matters relative to the 
great purposes of war, and of general concern (by 
which the States unitedly are affected, reserving to 



328 Georg-e Washing-ton 

themselves all matters of local and internal polity for 
the regulation of order and good government) we are 
attempting an impossibility, and very soon shall be- 
come (if it is not already the case) a many-headed 
monster — a heterogeneous mass — that never will or 
can steer to the same point." 

His *' skeleton of an army," as he called it, hung 
on the hills of Morristown and West Point and 
managed, somehow, to hold body and soul together 
until the fields blossomed afresh, and new life was 
infused into the fainting troops. 

The bright hopes of the year, incident to the ar- 
rival of the French at Newport, were darkened by 
one spot of the blackest treachery — the treason of 
Benedict Arnold. 

This officer, physically the bravest of the brave, 
beloved of Washington, ambitious yet ill-balanced, 
had risen by steady promotion, often interrupted by 
envy and intrigue, from the lowest to the highest, 
and when Howe evacuated Philadelphia, became 
military governor of the city. Ensconced in the 
handsome mansion of William Penn, he was courted, 
admired, feted, feared, and soon began to exhibit 
the ostentation and evil of his nature. Marrying 
at forty the lovely and accomplished loyalist, Mary 
Shippen (his second wife), Arnold began a career 
of extravagance which plunged him into debt and 
into evil practices : he was accused, tried, and court- 
martialed, being condemned to receive a reprimand 
from his chief. This reprimand, nobly expressed, 
was as follows : 




WASHINGTON AT TRENTON, JANUARY 2, 1777. 
From the engraving by Daggett after the original painting by Colonel TrumbuU. 



On to Yorktown 329 

" Our profession is the chastest of all. Even the 
shadow of a fault tarnishes the lustre of our finest 
achievements. The least inadvertence may rob us of 
the public favor, so hard to be acquired. I reprimand 
you for having forgotten that, in proportion as you 
had rendered yourself formidable to your enemies, 
you should have been guarded and temperate in your 
deportment toward your fellow - citizens. Exhibit 
anew those noble qualities which have placed you on 
the list of our most valued commanders. I will fur- 
nish you, as far as it may be in my power, with op- 
portunities of regaining the esteem of your country." 

Proud as Lucifer, Arnold was stung to the quick : 
" revenge, avarice, debt," writes a w'ell-known spe- 
cialist, were the key-notes of his career; ''money 
was his God," exclaimed a contemporary, who knew 
him well. A tragic thought took possession of his 
mind and heart, and burnt there till it consumed his 
whole finer nature. 

Mrs. Arnold had kept up correspondence with a 
handsome and gallant young officer, named Andre, 
who, during the British occupation of Philadelphia, 
had been prominent in social matters there, and had 
made himself a favourite by his noble and winning 
manners. 

Through him, Arnold fell into treacherous cor- 
respondence with Howe, and securing from Wash- 
ington command of the American fortifications at 
West Point, promised to deliver them over to the 
British General for fifteen thousand dollars, and the 
rank of brigadier-general in the English Army. 



23^ Georg-e Washing-ton 

The following brief note, from his Orderly Book, 
reveals Washington's position in the tragedy: 

" At the ' Robinson House.' 
" I arrived here yesterday, on my return from an 
interview with the French general and admiral, and 
have been witness to a scene of treason, as shocking 
as it was unexpected. General Arnold, from every 
circumstance, had entered into a plot for sacrificing 
West Point. He had an interview with Major Andre, 
the British adjutant-general, last week at Joshua H. 
Smith's where the plan was concerted. By an ex- 
traordinary concurrence of incidents Andre was taken 
while on his return, with several papers in Arnold's 
hand-writing, that proved the treason. The latter 
unluckily got notice of it before I did, went imme- 
diately down the river, got on board the Vulture, 
which brought up Andre, and proceeded to New 
York." 

The papers incriminating Arnold were found in 
the boot of Major Andre who, under the name of 
'' Anderson," was captured by three Americans as 
he travelled, late in September, from West Point to 
New York, on his way to announce Arnold's inten- 
tion of delivering up the fortress. Almost at the 
moment of the treachery, the Commander-in-chief 
unexpectedly reached West Point without a sus- 
picion of the plot ; but Arnold, leaving his distressed 
wife in a swoon, had already escaped to the British 
ship Vulture lying down the river, and reached New 
York in safety. 

Major Andre, so full of talents, learning, and 



On to Yorktown 331 

accomplishments, adjutant-general in his own army, 
daring as a soldier well could be, high-minded as the 
noble American, Nathan Hale (who suffered the 
same death a few months before), was gibbeted as 
a spy, Oct. 2, 1780, yet, nevertheless, held in equal 
honour by both nations. 

Tarrytown and Westminster Abbey record his ca- 
reer in eloquent monuments to his memory. 

Arnold's obscure and pathetic death in London, 
1 80 1, calling on his attendants to array him in his 
uniform as an American General, and throw over 
him the American flag,- — an end pregnant with pas- 
sion and remorse, — fitly closes the sorrowful drama 
of his life. 

And this treachery was committed against a 
bosom friend, of whom the Marquis de Chastellux 
wrote about this time : 

''It is not my intention to exaggerate. I wish only 
to express the impression General Washington has 
left on my mind ; the idea of a perfect whole, that 
cannot be the produce of enthusiasm, which rather 
would reject it, since the effect of proportion is to 
diminish the idea of greatness. Brave without temer- 
ity, laborious without ambition, generous without 
prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous without 
severity; he seems always to have confined himself 
within those limits, where the virtues, by cloathing 
themselves in more lively, but more changeable and 
doubtful colours, may be mistaken for faults. This is 
the seventh year that he has commanded the army, 
and that he has obeyed Congress; more need not he 



23^ George Washing^ton 

said, especially in America, where they know how to 
appreciate all the merit contained in this simple fact. 
Let it be repeated that Conde was intrepid, Turenne 
prudent, Eugene adroit, Catinat disinterested. It is 
not thus that Washington will be characterized. It 
will be said of him, at the end of a long civil zvar, he 
had nothing with which he could reproach himself. 
... In speaking of this perfect whole of which Gen- 
eral Washington furnishes the idea, I have not ex- 
cluded exterior form. His stature is noble and lofty, 
he is well made, and exactly proportioned ; his phy- 
siognomy mild and agreeable, but such as to render 
it impossible to speak particularly of any of his fea- 
tures, so that in quitting him, you have only the rec- 
ollection of a fine face." 

Thacher, in his Military Journal, says of the exe- 
cution of Andre : 

" October 2d. — Major Andre is no more among the 
living. I have just witnessed his exit. It was a trag- 
ical scene of the deepest interest. During his con- 
finement and trial, he exhibited those proud and 
elevated sensibilities which designate greatness and 
dignity of mind. Not a murmur or a sigh ever 
escaped him, and the civilities and attentions bestowed 
on him were politely acknowledged. . . . The fatal 
hour having arrived, a large detachment of troops 
was paraded, and an immense concourse of people as- 
sembled ; almost all our general and field officers, ex- 
cepting his Excellency and his staff, were present on 
horseback ; melancholy and gloom pervaded all ranks, 
and the scene was affectingly awful." 

When such noble spirits as Greene, LaFayette, 



On to Yorktown 333 

Steuben, and eleven others of the highest integrity, 
pronounced the judgment of death as a spy on 
Andre, there could be no doubt of his technical guilt. 

While these clouds were hovering so darkly over 
the Hudson, and Washington's heart was wrung 
with exquisite sorrow over the downfall of Arnold, 
affairs in the South were assuming a more promis- 
ing aspect, — were indeed shaping themselves towards 
Yorktown. The unfortunate Lincoln had cooped 
himself up in Charleston, only to fall into the hands 
of an overwhelming enemy, — a mistake exactly par- 
alleled, fourteen months later, on the waters of the 
muddy York, by Cornwallis himself. 

By an act of singular imprudence, Congress had 
erected an independent department in the Carolinas 
and Georgia, and had given the command of it to 
the heedless and headless Gates, still dazzling its 
purblind eyes with the glamour of the Burgoyne 
disaster. With this disaster, Gates had infinitely 
less to do than Arnold, Schuyler, or the heroic 
Morgan, whom the British commander compli- 
mented, says Lodge, with having the finest regiment 
of riflemen in the world. 

But Congress thought otherwise: Morgan, 
shamefully mistreated, had gone sulking to his Vir- 
ginia plantation; Arnold, treated in the same way, 
had turned traitor; and Gates — became the " hero " 
of a crushing defeat by Cornwallis, at Camden, in 
August, 1 78 1, not even knowing how many men he 
had in his own army. 

This rival of Washington was of the calibre of 



334 Georg-e Washington 

those omniscient Gauls who, in 1870-71, marched 
gaily with mitrailleuses and chassepots straight into 
the mouth of German '' Krupps," without ever in- 
quiring the road " a Berlin." 

Three weeks after the fall of Charleston, Sir 
Henry Clinton wrote home to the Ministry : 

" ' I may venture to assert that there are few men 
in South Carolina who are not either our prisoners or 
in arms with us.' The assertion was not extravagant, 
for the State seemed to lie prostrate at the foot of its 
conqueror. Yet, although the native loyalists were 
numerous and active, the submission of the mass of 
the people was more apparent than real. Many of 
them, stunned by the surrender of the capital, and 
well aware that the only American army in the State 
had ceased to exist, were ready to yield and accept 
British rule in silence. If they had been properly and 
judiciously dealt with, they could have easily been 
kept quiet; and if not loyal, they would at least have 
been neutral. But the policy of the British Com- 
manders made this impossible. To the people of South 
Carolina, brave, high-spirited and proud, they offered 
only the choice between death, confiscation, and ruin 
on the one side, and active service in the British army 
on the other. Thus forced to the wall, the South 
Carolinian who was not a convinced loyalist quickly 
determined that, if he must fight for his life in any 
event, he would do his fighting on the side of his 
country. Major James, for example, went into George- 
town to offer, in behalf of himself and his neighbors, 
to remain neutral. The usual choice was brutally 
offered him by the Captain in command. James re- 



On to Yorktown 335 

plied that he could not accept such conditions; and 
the gallant captain thereupon said that James was a 
* damned rebel/ and that he would have him hanged. 
Then, with a chair, James knocked down the repre- 
sentative of Great Britain, left him senseless, and 
went off with his four brothers to take up arms 
against England and fight her to the death. In one 
form or another, barring perhaps the little incident of 
the chair, James and his brothers were typical. The 
people began to rise in all directions, take their arms 
and withdraw to the woods and swamps, thence to 
wage a relentless, if desultory, warfare against their 
invaders." ^ 

As to Gates: 

" Either an abounding charity or a love of paradox 
has tempted some recent writers to say that Gates has 
been too harshly judged, but it is difficult to discover 
any error he could have committed which he did not 
commit. He came down to form an army, where none 
existed, around a nucleus of regular troops, not to take 
command of one already organized. He should not 
have fought until he had made his army, disciplined 
it, marched and manoeuvred with it, and tested it in 
some small actions. Instead of doing this he took the 
Continentals and marched straight for the main Brit- 
ish army, picking up reinforcements of untried, un- 
disciplined militia on the way. Arriving within strik- 
ing distance of the enemy, he actually did not know 
how many men he had, and sent off eight hundred of 
his best troops, the only militia apparently who had 
seen fighting. When he stumbled upon the enemy he 

* Lodge, The Story of the Revolution, p. 367. 



336 George Washington 

put his poorest troops in front, without, apparently, 
direction or support, and first of all the militia who 
had been with him only twenty-four hours. Colonel 
Stevens of Virginia, a brave man, said that the rout 
was due to the ' damned cowardly behavior of the 
militia,' and as he commanded one division of them 
he probably knew what he was saying. But to lay 
the fault on the militia is begging the question. The 
unsteadiness of perfectly green troops in the field is 
well known, and these men ought not to have been 
brought into action against regulars at all at that mo- 
ment — least of all should they have been put in the 
van to resist the onset of seasoned veterans without 
instructions or apparent support. The defeat of Cam- 
den was due to bad generalship, and resulted in the 
complete dispersion of the militia, and the sacrifice 
and slaughter of the hard-fighting Continentals. Sum- 
ter even was carried down in the wreck. He had cut 
off the convoy and baggage with perfect success, but 
the victory at Camden set the British free to pursue 
him. He eluded Cornwallis, but, encumbered and 
delayed by his prize, he was overtaken and surprised 
by Tarleton. Half his force was killed, wounded, or 
made prisoners ; the rest were scattered, and it is 
said that Sumter, a few days later, rode into Char- 
lotte alone, without a saddle and hatless, to begin all 
over again the work of forming a regiment, which he 
performed as usual with great energy and success." ^ 

In fact, there was a singular parallelism between 
the causes which led to Burgoyne's disaster at Sara- 
toga, and the causes which led Cornwallis into the 

^ Lodge, The Story of the Revolution, p. 378. 




THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE. 
From a French print, 1781. 



On to Yorktown 337 

trap at Yorktown. The Carolinas, like Western 
New York and the Canadian frontier, were full of 
disloyal men who vacillated, clung alternately to 
the one side or the other, trimmed their sails to 
every breeze, and made up a population of Laodi- 
ceans never really hot for anything. Vast woods 
extended everywhere; great rivers cleft the forests 
here and there; swamps and morasses, jungles of 
cane and dwarf palmetto, tangles of vine and lush 
vegetation hid a lurking foe when shelter was 
needed ; mountains covered with luxuriant Southern 
growths towered toward the West; and back and 
best of all, their woods and mountains grew one 
striking crop: a clan of half-wild, half-civilised, 
wholly true-hearted men — " the Rough Riders of 
the Revolution " — who, springing up as if by magic, 
precisely like the splendid yeomanry of New Eng- 
land round Lake Champlain, gathered in a web 
about Ferguson, Rawdon, Tarleton, and Cornwallis, 
harrassed, entangled, finally crushed them. 
Of these men Lodge finely says : 

" They gathered in an open grove, and, leaning on 
their rifles, these backwoodsmen and wild Indian 
fighters bowed their heads and listened in silence to 
the preacher who blessed them and called upon them 
to do battle and smite the foe with the sword of the 
Lord and Gideon. 

" Then they set out, a strange-looking army, clad 
in buckskin shirts and fringed leggings, without a 
tent, a bayonet or any baggage, and with hardly a 
sword among the officers. But every man had a rifle, 



338 George Washington 

a knife, and a tomahawk, and they were all mounted 
on wiry horses. Discipline in the usual military sense 
was unknown, and yet they were no ordinary militia. 
Every man was a fighter, bred in Indian wars, who 
had passed his life with horse and rifle, encompassed 
by perils. They were a formidable body of men — 
hardy, bold to recklessness, and swift of movement. 
They pushed on rapidly over the high tableland cov- 
ered with snow, and then down the ravines and gorges 
— rough riding, where there was hardly a trail — until, 
on the 29th, they reached the pleasant open lowlands 
near the North Forks of the Catawba." ^ 

The mettle of such men under such commanders 
as Greene (appointed to supersede Gates), Marion, 
Sumter, Steuben, " Light Horse " Harry Lee, Se- 
vier, Shelby, Campbell, and William Washington, 
soon showed itself at King's Mountain (Oct. 8th) 
and Cowpens (January 17, 1781), where Campbell, 
Morgan, and their '' Back Water " mountaineers in- 
flicted deadly blows on Ferguson and Tarleton, all 
but annihilating the flower of two of Cornwallis's 
armies. 

When it came to a drawn battle at Guilford Court 
House between Cornwallis and Greene, Greene to 
the outward eye was defeated, but it was one of 
those defeats which shatter victorious armies and 
lead to unforeseen consequences. The barbarities 
of Tarleton in hanging, burning, and plundering 
indiscriminately, now roused the fury of even so- 
called *' loyalists " : the whole South rose as one 

^ Lodge, The Story of the Revolution, p. 382. 



On to Yorktown 339 

man, threw sympathy to the winds, and multiplied 
their favourite guerrilla warfare into a tormenting 
and, finally, intolerable vexation to the British. 
Cornwallis recoiled, shrivelled up, fled before it as 
before swarms of poisonous mosquitoes whose sting 
was death, and who never left off their torment day 
or night. 

The South had had more than three years' rest, 
since the gallant Moultrie had repulsed the British 
fleet off Charleston; and now, full of fresh force 
and energy, it sprang elastically to the front, in aid 
of the plans of Washington and Greene, to rid the 
land of the invader. The multitude of generals, 
colonels, and majors, bred by the Revolutionary 
War, was a direct exemplification of the saying that, 
at that time, " in the knapsack of every private lay 
hidden the baton of a marshal." It was the era of 
self-made, self-taught, self -trained men whose latent 
abilities, nourished by every possible opportunity, 
burst brightly forth in the glow and friction of the 
times, and swept them forcefully to the front. 

Of such men the Southern army was full, from 
those '' swamp foxes " of the Revolution, Marion, 
Sumter, and Lee, to the bold mountain colonels who 
surrounded and slew Ferguson at King's Mountain, 
and made a real slaughter-pen for Tarleton at 
Cowpens. 

When Greene, the Fabius of the South, exactly 
trained in the tactics of Washington, threw himself 
with such men like a wedge between Cornwallis and 
Lord Rawdon, the end was not far to see. Even the 



340 George Washington 

" creeping paralysis and dry rot " that overspread 
Congress, and benumbed its members at this mo- 
ment, could not seriously impede the catastrophe 
to which all things, thanks to the mighty help of 
France, were now tending as surely as in some great 
tragedy of ^schylus or Corneille. " Sea power and 
money," cried Washington, " are absolutely neces- 
sary to our success " ; and both came in the very 
nick of time, when America had forgotten the very 
gleam of gold in these rotten paper times. The hard 
cash and hard common sense of Robert Morris and 
Benjamin Franklin wrought a wondrous change 
in the time ; the former by constant loans on his per- 
sonal credit, the latter by an advance of 6,000,000 
livres ($1,800,000) from France, nearly half of 
which arrived at this critical moment, when even 
Washington thought affairs more desperate than 
in the days of Valley Forge. A fine French fleet 
with three thousand men lay at Newport under De 
Barras and Count de Rochambeau, ready to co- 
operate with Washington. 

In June, the allied armies began to co-operate, 
sweep swiftly and silently around New York, and, 
on receipt of an all-important note from Count de 
Grasse stating that he had left the West Indies for 
Chesapeake Bay, start under LaFayette and Wash- 
ington for Virginia, three hundred miles away. 

Cornwallis now either had to follow the manoeu- 
vring Greene deep down in the Carolinas, and 
abandon Virginia, or he had to wheel, march swiftly 
from Wilmington, join Arnold in the Old Domin- 



On to Yorktown 341 

ion, and sweep that commonwealth with fire and 
sword. Drawn to his doom by a strange magnetism, 
he chose the Virginia campaign. 

Singularly spared the horrors of war since Dun- 
more had disappeared, '' the most antient and loyal 
colony of Virginia," rich and prosperous, had been 
one of the granaries of the Revolutionary Army. 
Strangely enough, when a British gunboat sailed up 
the Potomac, and was supplied with provisions by 
the timid overseer, Lund Washington, Mount Ver- 
non escaped destruction, with this historic rebuke 
from the General to his kinsman : 

*' At New Windsor, Monday, April 30. 
" I am very sorry of your loss. I am a little sorry to 
hear of my own ; but that which gives me most concern 
is, that you should go on board the enemy's vessels, and 
furnish them with refreshments. It would have been a 
less painful circumstance to me to have heard, that in 
consequence of your non-compliance with their request, 
they had burnt my house and laid the plantation in 
ruins. You ought to have considered yourself as my 
representative, and should have reflected on the bad 
example of communicating with the enemy, and 
making a voluntary offer of refreshments to them with 
a view to prevent a conflagration." 

Here, where British rule in America had begun, 
British rule in America was to end for ever. 

The minor incidents of Tarleton's raid on Char- 
lottesville, when Jefferson, then Governor, and the 
Legislature narrowly escaped capture, of Arnold's 
burning of Richmond, and his transfer to other 



342 Georg-e Washing-ton 

scenes of butchery and plunder in Connecticut, and 
of the occupation of WilHamsburg and the lower 
James, may be passed over, in view of the great 
fact that on August ist, Cornwallis reached York- 
town. August 9th, he had strongly intrenched him- 
self there in apparently impregnable fortifications, 
and was waiting for the British fleet to attack and 
disperse the ships of De Grasse, already whitening 
the Chesapeake. 

One precious glimpse at Mount Vernon, the first 
in many years, and Washington was off for Wil- 
liamsburg and Yorktown, accompanied by his brave 
generals and sixteen thousand troops thirsting for 
their game. 

It was an intensely anxious moment. 

Jealousies had arisen between the French ad- 
mirals : De Grasse, having already engaged Arbuth- 
not and Rodney in several indecisive naval fights, 
was restive, reluctant, insistent on leaving. Yield- 
ing to Washington's supplications, he at last prom- 
ised to remain until November ist. Pushing his 
operations with almost frenzied speed, the American 
General, zealously aided by LaFayette and Alex- 
ander Hamilton and the French contingent, strongly 
invested the British positions, which were most 
scientifically chosen for capture. Washington him- 
self fired the first gun, and from that moment till 
the 17th of October, the flash and roar of siege 
guns, brass cannon, and musketry were incessant. 

On the 17th, Cornwallis called a parley. On the 
1 8th, the articles of capitulation were signed. On 



On to Yorktown 343 

the 19th, from eight thousand to nine thousand 
royal troops, nine hundred sailors, many ships, trans- 
ports, and barges surrendered, the troops to General 
Lincoln, on behalf of the Americans, the ships and 
sailors to Count De Grasse. Cornwallis. feigning 
illness, sent his sword to Washington by General 
O'Hara. To the tune of " The World Turned Up- 
side Down " the brave British troops, who had 
fought so gallantly all through this trying campaign, 
marched through the serried ranks of Americans 
and French and stacked their arms. 

Of the closing scene an eye-witness wrote : 

" At about twelve o'clock, the combined army was 
arranged and drawn up in two lines extending more 
than a mile in length. The Americans were drawn 
up in a line on the right side of the road, and the 
French occupied the left. At the head of the former 
the great American commander, mounted on his noble 
courser, took his station, attended by his aides. At 
the head of the latter was posted the excellent Count 
Rochambeau and his suite. ... It was about two 
o'clock when the captive army advanced through the 
line formed for their reception. Every eye was pre- 
pared to gaze on Lord Cornwallis, the object of pe- 
culiar interest and solicitude ; but he disappointed our 
anxious expectations ; pretending indisposition, he 
made General O'Hara his substitute as the leader of 
his army. This officer was followed by the conquered 
troops in a slow and solemn step, with shouldered 
arms, colors cased and drums beating a British march. 
Having arrived at the head of the line. General 
O'Hara, elegantly mounted, advanced to his Excel- 



344 George Washington 

lency the Commander in Chief, taking off his hat, and 
apologized for the non-appearance of Earl Cornwallis. 
With his usual dignity and politeness his Excellency 
pointed to Major General Lincoln for directions, by 
whom the British army was conducted into a spacious 
field where It was intended they should ground their 
arms." 

Truly, the high tide of the American Revolution 
was reached. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE EBBING TIDE 

AGAIN " a private old man " sits, pen in hand, 
babbling in his picturesque way to Sir Horace 
Mann, under date of November 29, 1781 : 

'* I mentioned on Tuesday the captivity of Lord 
Cornwallis and his army, the Columbus who was to 
bestow America on us again. A second army taken 
in a drag-net is an uncommon event, and happened but 
once to the Romans, who sought adventures every- 
where. We have not lowered our tone on this new dis- 
grace, though I think we shall talk no more of insisting 
on implicit submission, which would rather be a gas- 
conade than firmness. In fact, there is one very un- 
lucky circumstance already come out, which must drive 
every American, to a man, from ever calling himself 
our friend. By the tenth article of the capitulation, 
Lord Cornwallis demanded that the loyal Americans 
in his army should not be punished. This was flatly 
refused, and he has left them to be hanged. • I doubt 
no vote of Parliament will be able to blanch such a — 
such a — I don't know what the word is for it ; he must 
get his uncle the Archbishop to christen it ; there is no 
name for it in any Pagan vocabulary. I suppose it 
will have a patent for being called Necessity. Well ! 
there ends another volume of the American war. It 
looks a little as if the history of it would be all we 

345 



346 George Washington 

should have for it, except forty miUions of debt, and 
three other wars that have grown out of it, and that 
do not seem so near to a conclusion. They say that 
Monsieur de Maurepas, who is dying, being told that 
the Due de Lauzun had brought the news of Lord 
Cornwallis's surrender, said, from Racine's Mithridate 
I think :— 

' Mes derniers regards ont vu fuir les Romains.' 

" How Lord Chatham will frown when they 
meet ! . . . 

'' The warmth in the House of Commons is pro- 
digiously rekindled ; but Lord Cornwallis's fate has 
cost the Administration no ground there. The names 
of most eclat in the Opposition are two names to which 
those walls have been much accustomed at the same 
period — Charles Fox and William Pitt, second son of 
Lord Chatham. Eloquence is the only one of our 
brilliant qualities that does not seem to have degener- 
ated rapidly — but I shall leave debates to your nephew, 
now an ear-witness : I could only re-echo newspapers. 
Is it not another odd coincidence of events, that while 
the father Laurens is prisoner to Lord Cornwallis as 
Constable of the Tower, the son Laurens signed the 
capitulation by which Lord Cornwallis became prison- 
er? It is said too, I don't know if truly, that this ca- 
pitulation and that of Saratoga were signed on the 
same anniversary. These are certainly the speculations 
of an idle man, and the more trifling when one con- 
siders the moment. But alas ! what would my most 
grave speculations avail? From the hour that fatal 
^gg, the Stamp Act, was laid, I disliked it and all the 
vipers hatched from it. I now hear man}^ curse it, who 



The Ebbing- Tide 347 

fed the vermin with poisonous weeds. Yet the guilty 
and the innocent rue it equally hitherto! I would not 
answer for what is to come ! Seven years of mis- 
carriages may sour the sweetest tempers, and the most 
sweetened. O ! where is the Dove with the olive- 
branch? Long ago I told you that you and I might 
not live to see an end of the American war. It is very 
near its end indeed now — its consequences are far 
from a conclusion. In some respects, they are com- 
mencing a new date, which will reach far beyond us. 
I desire not to pry into that book of futurity." ^ 

Horace Walpole, always looking out for coinci- 
dences, could not but be struck by the almost exact 
correspondence of dates betw^een this surrender and 
that of Burgoyne, three years before, and he mourn- 
fully asserts that he believes the two capitulations 
took place on exactly the same day. This, however, 
was not strictly the case, though the dates were very 
close together. 

A little while after another commentator, mar- 
vellous in the force and fertility of his pamphlet 
work on the various aspects of the crises, the cele- 
brated Tom Paine, wrote to Washington, September 
2, 1782: 

" I have the honor of presenting you with fifty 
copies of my Letter to the Abbe Raynal [dated Phila- 
delphia, August 21, 1782] for the use of the army, and 
to repeat to you my acknowledgments for your friend- 
ship. I fully believe we have seen our worst days 
over. The spirit of the war, on the part of the enemy, 

^ Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. ii, p. 244. 



34^ George Washington 

is certainly on the decline, full as much as we think 
for. I draw this opinion not only from the present 
promising appearances of things, and the difficulties 
we know the British Cabinet is in ; but I add to it the 
peculiar effect which certain periods of time have, more 
or less, upon all men. The British have accustomed 
themselves to think of seven years in a manner differ- 
ent to other portions of time. They acquire this partly 
by habit, by reason, by religion, and by superstition. 
They serve seven years apprenticeship — they elect their 
parliament for seven years — they punish by seven years 
transportation, or the duplicate or triplicate of that 
term — they let their leases in the same manner, and 
they read that Jacob served seven years for one wife, 
and after that seven years for another; and this par- 
ticular period of time, by a variety of concurrences, 
has obtained an influence in their mind. They have 
now had seven years of war, and are no further on 
the Continent than when they began. The super- 
stitious and populous part will therefore conclude that 
it is not to he, and the rational part of them will think 
they have tried an unsuccessful and expensive project 
long enough, and by these two joining issue in the 
same eventual opinion, the obstinate part among them 
will be beaten out ; unless, consistent with their former 
sagacity, they should get over the matter by an act of 
parliament ' to hind TIME in all cases whatsoever' or 
declare him a rehel." 

To this curious prophecy Washington almost 
smilingly replied : 

" I have the pleasure to acknowledge your favor, in- 
forming me of your proposal to present me with fifty 



The Ebbing- Tide 349 

copies of your last publication for the amusement of 
the army. For this intention you have my sincere 
thanks, not only on my own account, but for the plea- 
sure, which I doubt not the gentlemen of the army will 
receive from the perusal of your pamphlets. Your ob- 
servations on the period of seven years, as it applies 
to British minds, are ingenious, and I wish it may not 
fail of its effects in the present instance." 

Up to Yorktown, indeed, had for nearly seven 
years steadily flow^ed the tide of revolution, slowly 
but steadily increasing in force and volume from 
1775 to 1 78 1, until the high tide was reached that 
October morning. 

The ecstatic scene enacted at Franklin's lodgings 
at Passy, in December, 1777, when the news of 
Burgoyne's disaster reached the American envoys 
to the French court, was almost literally repeated. 

" It was not until December 4, 1777, that there broke 
a great and sudden rift in the solid cloudiness. First 
there came a vague rumor of good news no one at all 
knew what ; then a post-chaise drove into Dr. Frank- 
lin's courtyard, and from it hastily alighted the young 
messenger, Jonathan Loring Austin, whom Congress 
had sent express from Philadelphia, and who had 
accomplished an extraordinarily rapid journey. The 
American group of envoys and agents were all there, 
gathered by the mysterious report which had reached 
them, and at the sound of the wheels they ran out into 
the court-yard and eagerly surrounded the chaise. ' Sir/ 
exclaimed Franklin, ' is Philadelphia taken? ' ' Yes, sir,' 
repHed Austin ; and Franklin clasped his hands and 
turned to reenter the house. But Austin cried that he 



350 Georg-e Washington 

bore greater news : that General Burgoyne and his 
whole army were prisoners of war! At the words the 
glorious sunshine burst forth. Beaumarchais, the ec- 
static, sprang into his carriage and drove madly for 
the city to spread the story ; but he upset his vehicle 
and dislocated his arm. The envoys hastily read and 
wrote ; in a few hours Austin was again on the road, 
this time bound to de Vergennes at Versailles, to tell 
the great tidings. Soon all Paris got the news and 
burst into triumphant rejoicing over the disaster to 
England." ^ 

'' The capitulation to Mr. Gates," as the British 
were pleased to designate the surrender of Burgoyne, 
brought immediately, as its richest fruit, the French 
Alliance ; the surrender of Cornwallis brought '' in- 
dependency," as the writers of that day quaintly 
phrased it. 

The venerable philosopher, so strongly intrenched 
in French favour, could scarcely contain himself for 
the rapturous joy which the news brought him. 
Long before, he had cast a deep glance into the 
heart of English diplomacy when he laconically re- 
marked, ^' The British ministry are unable to con- 
tinue the war and are too proud to give it up." 

This was exactly true. 

Franklin, the patriarch of American envoys, who 
at seventy-six possessed more sense than any man 
he had ever seen, said John Jay, had been for years 
caressing Vergennes, the French Minister, and the 
French Court with the playful antics of a septua- 

^ Morse, Benjamin Franklin, p. 267. 




JOHN JAY. 
From a steei engraving. 



The Ebbing Tide 35 1 

genarian kitten. His delicate tact, his mastery over 
the conventional courtesies of European life, his 
face, luminous with benevolence, his scientific ex- 
ploits, the quaintness of his Quaker costume — even 
his '' Franklin " spectacles, his wigless head, and 
broad-brimmed hat — had endeared him to the 
French and made him a universal favourite. In 
character, he was one of those mellow mixtures of 
acid and oil that baffle the psychologist — and radiate 
optimism on the just and the unjust alike. In his 
correspondence, the acid frequently eats up the oil; 
in his public utterances, the oil overspreads the 
tempestuous sea and smooths every wrinkle out of it. 
The ablest diplomatist of the eighteenth century, 
as Bancroft calls him, his smiling omniscience ex- 
tended over every quarter of the globe and into 
every corner of literature and science. Medals were 
struck in his honour; epigrams were showered on 
his head; he was reputed to be the only American 
man-of-the-world of his century. Bland philoso- 
pher, acute inventor, universal lover of his kind as 
he was, the twinkle of his eye, the humour of his 
tongue, the charm of his conversation and his su- 
preme wisdom, made him the one man most es- 
sential for America to have abroad at this time — an 
influence, a presence, a heart, a soul in the soulless 
diplomacy of the hour wherein the wily Vergennes, 
selfish to the core, thinking only of France, ruled 
supreme. Socrates did not more hopefully strive to 
be a citizen of all the world than Benjamin Franklin 
really was. 



352 Georg-e Washing-ton 

Associated with him in his foreign mission, were 
two men of great gifts and irreproachable character, 
John Adams of Massachusetts, who succeeded 
Washington as second President of the United 
States, and John Jay, later, first Chief Justice of the 
Supreme Court of his country; and, together, the 
three, Argus-eyed in the interests of Congress, be- 
gan to scan the European heavens, watch for indica- 
tions of peace, and secure for their country the 
highest possible good to be wrenched, if need be, 
from the reluctant cabinets of London, Paris, and 
Madrid. 

Adams, stubborn, suspicious, blunt, a trifle super- 
cilious, learned in the technical law, but unlearned 
in the codes of etiquette and diplomacy, a blurter- 
out of unwelcome truths, unacquainted with the 
niceties of European intercourse at the foreign 
office; frank, fearless, blunderingly honest, Adams 
was of the stuff to endure such insults as George 
III.'s turning his back on him, and yet surviving the 
insult; tolerating the insolence of Lord North and 
Lord Germaine and the coterie of Downing Street; 
and bearing such scourging at the epistolary 
whipping-post, as Vergennes, from time to time, 
administered to him in his bitter letters to Congress. 

Of these diplomatic missionaries, he was the St. 
Paul in that celebrated chapter of IL Corinthians, 
in which the penal autobiography of the Apostle is 
recorded. 

Deeply schooled by his residence at Madrid in 
the crafts of Spanish intrigue, John Jay, who had 



The Ebbing- Tide 353 

more of Adams than of Franklin in his constitution, 
saw speedily into the crookedness of Vergennes and 
the Spanish family compact, viewed all things from 
the perch of sound international law, and was vigi- 
lant in his watch over all boundary questions in 
which the subtle Latin races might claim an interest. 

Thus admirably represented abroad, America 
might well await the consequences of Yorktown al- 
most with indifference. A year more, and these 
consequences had wrought themselves out to the 
fullest satisfaction of the patriots. 

The perfect joy of Yorktown was, however, 
marred for Washington by one sharp personal sor- 
row, the death of his stepson John Parke Custis, 
who died of camp-fever shortly after the surrender, 
leaving a family of small children two of whom 
Washington adopted as his own. It is to one of 
these children, George Washington Parke Custis 
the orator, writer, and owner of Arlington, that 
history owes the delightful Recollections and Pri- 
vate Memoirs of Washington, from which we have 
freely quoted in the earlier part of this biography. 
The other was the lovely " Nellie " Custis, whose 
lustrous eyes look out of the portrait found in the 
Lee Collection at Lexington. 

Washington's flying visit to his venerable mother, 
at Fredericksburg near by, is thus described by G. 
W. P. Custis, in the curious Johnsonian style of the 
early part of the last century: 

*' Late in the year 1781, on the return of the com- 



354 Georg-e Washing-ton 

bined armies from Yorktovvn, the mother of Washing- 
ton was permitted again to see and embrace her il- 
lustrious son, the first time in almost seven years. As 
soon as he had dismounted, in the midst of a numerous 
and brilliant suite, after reaching Fredericksburg, he 
sent to apprize her of his arrival, and to know when 
it would be her pleasure to receive him. And now, 
reader, mark the force of early education and habits, 
and the superiority of the Spartan over the Persian 
school, in this interview of the Great Washington with 
his admirable parent and instructor. No pageantry of 
war proclaimed his coming, no trumpets sounded, no 
banners waved. Alone and on foot, the general-in- 
chief of the combined armies of France and America, 
the deliverer of his country, the hero of the age, re- 
paired to pay his humble duty to her whom he vener- 
ated as the author of his being — the founder of his 
fortune and his fame ; for full well he knew that the 
matron was made of sterner stuff than to be moved by 
all the pride that glory ever gave, and all the pomp 
and circumstance of power. 

*' She was alone, her aged hands employed in the 
works of domestic industry, when the good news was 
announced, and it was further told, that the victor- 
chief was in waiting at the threshold. She bid him wel- 
come by a warm embrace, and by the well-remembered 
and endearing name of George — the familiar name of 
his childhood ; she inquired as to his health, remarked 
the lines which mighty cares and many toils had made 
in his manly countenance, spoke much of old times and 
old friends, but of his glory not one word. 

" Meantime, in the village of Fredericksburg, all 
was joy and revelry; the town was crowded with the 



V 



^ I 



^i 





MAJOR-GENERAL BENJAMIN LINCOLN. 
From a steel engraving. 



The Ebbing Tide 355 

officers of the French and American armies, and with 
gentlemen for many miles around, who hastened to 
welcome the conquerors of Cornwallis. The citizens 
got up a splendid ball, to which the matron was special- 
ly invited. She observed, that although her dancing 
days were pretty well over, she should feel happy in 
contributing to the general festivity, and consented to 
attend. 

'' The foreign officers were anxious to see the 
mother of their chief. They had heard indistinct ru- 
mors touching her remarkable life and character, but 
forming their judgments from European examples, 
they were prepared to expect in the mother, that glitter 
and show which would have been attached to the 
parents of the great, in the countries of the old world. 
How were they surprised, when leaning on the arm of 
her son, she entered the room, dressed in the very 
plain, yet becoming garb, worn by the Virginia lady of 
the old time. Her address always dignified and im- 
posing, was courteous, though reserved. She received 
the complimentary attentions which were paid to her 
without evincing the slightest elevation, and at an early 
hour, wishing the company much enjoyment of their 
pleasures, observed, that it was high time for old folks 
to be in bed, and retired, leaning as before on the arm 
of her son. 

'* The foreign officers were amazed in beholding 
one whom so many causes conspired to elevate, pre- 
serving the even tenor of her life, while such a blaze 
of glory shone upon her name and offspring. It was 
a moral spectacle such as the European world had 
furnished no examples [of]. Names of ancient lore 
were heard to escape from their lips ; and they de- 



356 George Washington 

clared, ' if such are the matrons in America, well may 
she boast of illustrious sons.' 

" It was on this festive occasion, that General Wash- 
ington danced a minuet with Mrs. Willis. It closed his 
dancing days. The minuet was much in vogue at that 
period, and was peculiarly calculated for the display of 
the splendid figure of the chief, and his natural grace 
and elegance of air and manner, llie gallant French- 
men who were present, of which fine people it may 
be said that dancing forms one of the elements of their 
existence, so much admired the American performance, 
as to admit that a Parisian education could not have 
improved it. As the evening advanced, the com- 
mander-in-chief yielding to the general gayety of the 
scene, went down some dozen couples in the contre- 
dance with great spirit and satisfaction." 

This idyllic scene from the olden time throws a 
charming and truthful light upon one side of Wash- 
ington's character — his devotion to his mother, and 
the simple joy he felt in her presence and in that 
of his intimate friends. When the Revolution closed 
a year later, the General never again danced, said 
Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, though often tempted to 
do so by the beautiful women who caressed and 
adored him. 

From this gleam of friendly joy at Fredericks- 
burg, so intimately associated with his schoolboy 
days, he passed on to his beloved Mount Vernon, 
and loitering a while there, hurried to his official 
responsibilities at Philadelphia. In this lively city 
he spent the winter of 1782, overwhelmed with ad- 



The Ebbing- Tide 357 

dresses, balls, parties, ovations of every kind, the 
centre of all the festivities given in honour of the 
Continental armies and their achievements. 

Wilmington, North Carolina, was soon evacuated 
by the invader, who now concentrated all his forces 
in the South at Charleston and Savannah, and af- 
fairs in that region sped swimmingly to a conclusion, 
till, towards the middle of December, the British 
marched out of Charleston, and General Greene, who 
'' lost so many battles and won so many campaigns," 
marched in amid the grateful acclamations of the 
people. Old St. Michael's never pealed a merrier 
chime, the harbour batteries of Fort Moultrie and 
Sullivan's Island never emitted more joyous thun- 
ders than on this occasion. 

Firm as King and Parliament were in their zeal 
still to prosecute the war, gaily as the exchange of 
prisoners went on through official cartels, ex- 
changed, as the captive Cornwallis might be, for the 
captured Laurens, affairs rounded in but slowly to- 
wards peace, which now, to both sides, had become 
the sweetest and strongest emotion of the hour. In 
May, Sir Guy Carleton and Admiral Digby, at 
New York, were appointed a Peace Commission to 
sound the colonies (now ex-colonies for all gener- 
ations to come) and treat with commissioners 
from Congress on the all-important matter of a 
settlement. 

About the same time, a singular letter came to 
the Commander-in-chief which, with Washington's 
reply, is so characteristic of the monarchical and re- 



358 Georg^e Washing-ton 

publican principles at stake in the contest, that both 
must be quoted. 

A German royalist, Lewis Nicola, Colonel of the 
Invalid Regiment in the American service, deeming 
the Government unstable and the Congress too im- 
poverished to settle the enormous arrearages of pay 
due the soldiers, wrote the following letter to his 
commander, while the army was in camp at New- 
burgh on the Hudson : 

*' I little doubt, that, when the benefits of a mixed 
government are pointed out, and duly considered, such 
will be readily adopted. In this case it will, I believe, 
be uncontroverted, that the same abilities, which have 
led us through difficulties, apparently insurmountable 
by human power, to victory and glory, those qualities, 
that have merited and obtained the universal esteem 
and veneration of an army, would be most likely to 
conduct and direct us in the smoother paths of peace. 
Some people have so connected the ideas of tyranny 
and monarchy, as to find it very difficult to separate 
them. It may therefore be requisite to give the head 
of such a constitution, as I propose, some title appar- 
ently more moderate; but, if all other things were once 
adjusted, I believe strong arguments might be pro- 
duced for admitting the title of King, which I con- 
ceive would be attended with some material ad- 
vantages." 

Washington replied : 

*' With a mixture of great surprise and astonish- 
ment, I have read with attention the sentiments you 
have submitted to my perusal. Be assured. Sir, no 



The Ebbing- Tide 359 

occurrence in the course of the war has given me 
more painful sensations, than your information of 
there being such ideas existing in the army, as you 
have expressed, and I must view with abhorrence and 
reprehend with severity. . . . 

" ... I am much at a loss to conceive what part of 
my conduct could have given encouragement to an 
address, which to me seems big with the greatest mis- 
chiefs, that can befall my country. If I am not de- 
ceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have 
found a person to whom your schemes are more dis- 
agreeable." 

A painful light is cast upon the sincerity of the 
peace negotiations referred to, in a letter written at 
this time by Washington to Colonel John Laurens : 

'' Sir Guy Carleton is using every art to soothe and 
lull our people into a state of security. Admiral Digby 
is capturing all our vessels, and suffocating as fast 
as possible in prison-ships all our seamen, w^ho will not 
enlist into the service of his Britannic Majesty; and 
Haldimand [Governor-General of Quebec] with his 
savage allies, is scalping and burning on the frontiers. 
Such is the line of conduct pursued by the different 
commanders, and such their politics." 

As long as such things could go on, peace seemed 
like a dipping gull, now rising from, now^ sinking 
into the seething waters, a hovering, unstable thing, 
unable to alight anywhere in these distracted lands. 

Especially impossible did it seem, when Admiral 
Rodney defeated and captured De Grasse and his 
fleet in the West Indies in April, and Yorktown for 



360 George Washing-ton 

a moment was brilliantly avenged. True, all this 
time the privateers, commissioned by Franklin, were 
scouring the Channel and scourging the high seas, 
pouncing with '' Alabama "-like swiftness on the fat 
British coasting-trade, multiplying abundantly in 
the regions where buccaneer and filibuster, before 
and after this time, so sadly distinguished them- 
selves, and realising the old viking spirit in a thou- 
sand picturesque, sanguinary forms never dreamt 
of by the Norse sea-rovers. 

John Paul Jones, the Scotch gardener, and others 
like him, were already starting the germs of that sea- 
power which sprang, first and foremost, from the 
daring achievements of Yankee skippers, hunting 
the elusive whale in the Arctic seas, ripened quickly 
to the achievements of 18 12, and, by the time the 
year i860 came around, rendered the United States 
Commercial Navy the swiftest and finest in the 
world. 

Yet for all this retrospective and prospective suc- 
cess, Washington could only gloomily write to 
James McHenry, as late as September of this year 

(1782): 

" That the King will push the war, as long as the 
nation will find men and money, admits not of a doubt 
in my mind. The whole tenor of his conduct, as well 
as his last proroguing speech, on the nth of July, 
plainly indicates it, and shows in a clear point of view 
the impolicy of relaxation on our part. If we are wise, 
let us prepare for the worst. There is nothing, which 



The Ebbing Tide 361 

will so soon produce a speedy and honorable peace, as 
a state of preparation for war ; and we must either do 
this, or lay our account to patch up an inglorious peace, 
after all the toil, blood, and treasure we have spent." 

The readiness of the Americans to go on with the 
war is thus attested by the Prince de Broglie, who 
seeing them in their quarters at Verplanck's on the 
Hudson, thus describes them to a correspondent: 

" The whole army was paraded under arms this 
morning in order to honor his Excellency Count 
Rochambeau on his arrival from the southward. The 
troops were all formed in two lines extending from the 
ferry, where the count crossed, to headquarters. A 
troop of horse met and received him at King's ferry, 
and conducted him through the line to General Wash- 
ington's quarters, where sitting on his horse by the side 
of his Excellency, the whole army marched before him 
and paid the usual salute and honors. Our troops were 
now in complete uniform and exhibited every mark of 
soldierly discipline. Count Rochambeau was most 
highly gratified to perceive the very great improve- 
ment which our army had made in appearance since 
he last reviewed them, and expressed his astonishment 
at their rapid progress in military skill and discipline. 
He said to General Washington ' you must have formed 
an alliance with the King of Prussia. These troops 
are Prussians.' Several of the principal officers of the 
French army who have seen troops of different Euro- 
pean nations, have bestowed the highest encomiums and 
applause on our army, and declared that they had seen 
none superior to the Americans." 



362 George Washing-ton 

Another disinterested observer writes of the 
Commander : 

" One of my most earnest wishes was to set Wash- 
ington, the hero of America. He was then encamped at 
a short distance from us, and the Count de Rocham- 
beau was kind enough to introduce me to him. Tog 
often reahty disappoints the expectations our imagi> 
nation had raised, and admiracion diminishes by a too 
near view of the object upon which it had been be- 
stowed ; but, on seeing G^;neral Washington, I found 
a perfect similarity between the impression produced 
upon me by his aspect, and the idea I had formed of 
him. His exterior disciosed, as it were, the history oi 
his Hfe : simpHcity, grandeur, dignity, calmness, good- 
ness, firmness, the attributes of his character, were al- 
so stamped upon his features, and in all his person. 
His stature was noble and elevated ; the expression of 
his features mild and benevolent ; his smile graceful 
and pleasing; his manners simple, without familiarity. 
. . . Washington, when I saw him, was forty-nine 
years of age. He endeavored modestly to avoid the 
marks of admiration and respect which were so 
anxiously offered to him, and yet no man ever knew 
better how to receive and to acknowledge them. He 
listened, with an obliging attention, to all those who 
addressed him, and the expression of his countenance 
had conveyed his answer before he spoke." 

Hardly is it to be wondered at, that a man of this 
character, so simple, so lofty, so commanding, should 
now grasp the reins of moral power with supreme 
firmness, and control a situation which had become 
nearly tragic. This sihXAtlon unfolded during the 



The Ebbing- Tide 363 

year 1783, out of the intolerable suspense and suf- 
ferings of the soldiers whose patience had worn out 
about their pay, and whose bitterness was nourished 
by anonymous articles scattered about the camp, in- 
stigated, it is thought, by General Gates. The scene 
was one of the most pathetic in all Washington's 
career. 

An unsigned address, due to a certain Major 
Armstrong, awoke the spirit of insurrection in the 
bosom of the soldiers. 

" The voice of the armed man was rising clearly and 
distinctly now. It declared the sufferings and sorrows 
of the soldier and the ingratitude of Congress, and 
called the army to action and to the use of force. Thus 
the direct appeal was made. Only one man could keep 
words from becoming deeds, and Washington came 
forward and took control of the whole movement. He 
censured the address in general orders, and then called, 
himself, a meeting of the officers. When they had 
assembled, Washington arose with a manuscript in his 
hand, and as he took out his glasses he said : ' You 
see, gentlemen, I have grown both blind and gray in 
your service.' Very simple words, very touching, with 
a pathos which no rhetoric could give, a pathos pos- 
sible only in a great nature deeply stirred. And then 
he read his speech — clear^ vigorous, elevated in tone, 
an appeal to the past and to patriotism, an earnest 
prayer to leave that past unsullied and to show confi- 
dence in the Government and the civil power, the whole 
ending with a promise that the General would obtain 
justice for the army." ^ 

^ Lodge, The Story of the Revolution, p. 545. 



364 George Washington 

" A meeting of the officers of the army at the * New 
Building/ conformably to the notification given in 
the general orders of the nth, General Gates as senior 
officer presiding. The meeting was opened by the 
Commander-in-Chief, who read an address, reminding 
those present of the cause for which they had taken up 
arms, and appealing to them not to adopt measures 
which might cast a shade over that glory which had 
been so justly acquired, and tarnish the reputation of 
an army which was celebrated through all Europe for 
its fortitude and patriotism. By thus determining and 
thus acting, you will give one more distinguished proof 
of unexampled patriotism and patient virtue, rising 
superior to the pressure of the most complicated suf- 
ferings ; and you will, by the dignity of your conduct, 
afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of 
the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, 
* Had this day been wanting, the world had never seen 
the last stage of perfection, to which human nature is 
capable of attaining.' " ^ 

In reference to the whole matter, Washington in 
an official communication to Congress says as simply 
as possible : 

'' At Newburgh. 

" I have the honor to inform your Excellency, for 
the satisfaction of Congress, that the meeting of the 
officers, which was mentioned in my last, was held 
yesterday ; and that it has terminated in a manner, 
which I had reason to expect, from a knowledge of that 
good sense and steady patriotism of the gentlemen of 
the army, which on frequent occasions I have dis- 
covered." 

^ Baker, Itinerary of General Washington, vol. i, p. 290. 



The Ebbing- Tide 365 

" At Newburgh. 
" Orderly Book. — The Commander-in-Chief is high- 
ly satisfied with the report of the proceedings of the 
officers assembled on the 15th instant, in obedience to 
the orders of the nth. He begs his inability to com- 
municate an adequate idea of the pleasing feelings 
which have been excited in his breast by the affection- 
ate sentiments expressed toward him on that occasion, 
may be considered as an apology for his silence." 

The tide was now swiftly ebbing towards peace. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A '' MERRIE CHRISTMAS " 

THE 30th of the previous November, — it was now 
March, 1783, — had seen the signing of the 
preHminaries of peace at Paris, after long and dif- 
ficult negotiations between Oswald, Grenville, and 
Strachey on behalf of the British, and Franklin, 
Adams, Jay, and Laurens on behalf of the other 
side. Perhaps the very news of peace excited the 
suspicions of the army that Congress would disband 
them without settling its accounts, and that thus 
their sufferings would never be requited. 

This mutinous spirit, which had before filled the 
Pennsylvania and Jersey troops, and had lately 
caused Congress to flee in terror from Philadelphia 
to Princeton, was, not without reason, attributed to 
Gates, " about whom hangs the odious aroma of 
impotent malice " ; the ambiguous politician-com- 
mander had claimed the glory of Saratoga, had been 
forced to retire after his crushing defeat by Corn- 
wallis at Camden, South Carolina, and, now rein- 
stated, had by the magnanimity of Washington been 
put in command of the right wing of the American 
Army at the New York headquarters. 

Perhaps the return of the French troops, in 
October and January, aroused that longing for home, 

366 



A *'Merrie Christmas'* 367 

" the desire to kiss wives and sweethearts," — which 
all along had made the American soldiers' position 
one of peculiar hardship. Washington's keen ap- 
preciation of the fortitude of his men crops out in a 
letter of congratulation to General Greene, on the 
happy ending of the Charleston campaign : 

'' It is with a pleasure, which friendship only is sus- 
ceptible of, that I congratulate you on the glorious end 
you have put to hostilities in the Southern States. The 
honor and advantages of it, I hope and trust you will 
long live to enjoy ... If historiographers should be 
hardy enough to fill the page of History with the 
advantages, that have been gained with unequal num- 
bers, (on the part of America) in the course of this 
contest, and attempt to relate the distressing circum- 
stances under which they have been obtained, it is more 
than probable, that Posterity will bestow on their labors 
the epithet and marks of fiction ; for it will not be 
believed, that such a force as Great Britain has em- 
ployed for eight years in this country could be baffled 
in their plan of subjugating it, by numbers infinitely 
less, composed of men oftentimes half starved, always 
in Rags, without pay, and experiencing at times every 
species of distress, which human nature is capable of 
undergoing. I intended to have wrote you a long let- 
ter on sundry matters; but Major Burnet popped in 
unexpectedly at a time, when I was preparing for the 
celebration of the day, and was just going to a review 
of the troops, previous to the feu de joie." 

When the good ship Washington, Captain Burney, 
brought to Philadelphia the joyful tidings of the 
signing of the peace preliminaries, the Commander's 



368 George Washing-ton 

observations to the president of Congress were as 
follows : 

'' I have the honor to acknowledge your Excellency's 
favor of the 12th instant, and to thank you most sin- 
cerely for the intelligence you were pleased to com- 
municate. The articles of treaty between America and 
Great Britain are as full and as satisfactory as we had 
reason to expect ; but, from the connexion in which 
they stand with a general pacification^ they are very 
inconclusive and contingent." 

To Alexander Hamilton, one of his most efficient 
aides, counsellors, and friends, he wrote some ten 
days later: 

*' I rejoice most exceedingly that there is an end to 
our warfare, and that such a field is opening to our 
view, as will, with wisdom to direct the cultivation of 
it, make us a great, a respectable, and happy people ; 
but it must be improved by other means than State 
politics, and unreasonable jealousies and prejudices, or 
(it requires not the second sight to see that) we shall 
be instruments in the hands of our enemies, and those 
European powers, who may be jealous of our greatness 
in union, to dissolve the confederation. But, to obtain 
this, although the way seems extremely plain, is not so 
easy. 

" It remains only for the States to be wise, and to 
establish their independence on the basis of an invio- 
lable, efficacious union, and a firm confederation, 
which may prevent their being made the sport of Euro- 
pean policy. May heaven give them 'wisdom to adopt 
the measures still necessary for this important pur- 
pose.'* 



A ''Merrie Christmas" 369 

His prayer for an inviolable Union was thus early 
and thus forcefully expressed, and no less great was 
his dread that the confederation might prove a rope 
of sand. This dread was further emphasised in a 
remarkable letter to LaFayette in the April of this 
year. His experience with a rebellious and insub- 
ordinate army appeared to fill him with horror at 
the prospect of dissolving and insubordinate States, 
run away with by the nightmare of individualism 
and State sovereignty. 

"We stand now an Independent People, and have 
yet to learn political Tactics. We are placed among 
the nations of the Earth, and have a character to es- 
tablish; but how we shall acquit ourselves, time must 
discover. The probability is (at least I fear it) that 
local or State politics will interfere too much with the 
more liberal and extensive plan of government, which 
wisdom and foresight, freed from the mist of prejudice, 
would dictate; and that we shall be guilty of many 
blunders in treading this boundless theatre, before we 
shall have arrived at any perfection in this art ; in a 
word, that the experience, which is purchased at the 
price of difficulties and distress, will alone convince 
us, that the honor, power, and true Interest of this 
Country must be measured by a Continental scale, and 
that every departure therefrom weakens the Union, 
and may ultimately break the band which holds us 
together." 

April 6th became an ever-memorable day in the 
annals of the war, as the day on which Sir Guy 
Carleton, at New York, announced to Washington 



370 Georg-e Washington 

official tidings of the offered ratification of the 
peace terms by his Majesty's government. The let- 
ters exchanged by the two commanders follow : 

Carleton to Washington 
" A packet from England arrived in this port last 
night, by which I have despatches from Mr. Towns- 
hend, one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of 
State, communicating official intelligence, that prelimi- 
nary articles of peace with France and Spain were 
signed at Paris on the 20th of January last, and that 
the ratifications have been since exchanged at the same 
place. The King, Sir^ has been pleased in consequence 
of these events, to order proclamations to be published, 
declaring a cessation of arms, as well by sea as land ; 
and his Majesty's pleasure signified, that I should 
cause the same to be published in all places under my 
command, in order that his Majesty's subjects may pay 
immediate and due obedience thereto ; and such procla- 
mation I shall accordingly cause to be made on Tues- 
day next, the 8th instant." 

Washington to Carleton 

'' Wednesday, April 9. 
" I feel great satisfaction from your Excellency's 
despatches by Captain Stapleton, conveying to me the 
joyful annunciation of your having received official 
accounts of the conclusion of a general peace, and a 
cessation of hostilities. Without official authority 
from Congress, but perfectly relying on your commu- 
nication, I can at this time only issue my orders to the 
American out-posts, to suspend all acts of hostilities 
until further orders. This shall be instantly done ; 
and I shall be happy in the momentary expectation of 



A *'Merrie Christmas" 371 

having it in my power to publish to the American army 
a general cessation of hostilities between Great Britain 
and America." 

Years before, in a small Massachusetts village, the 
opening of hostilities had begun with the " Minute 
men," all alert and aflame to resent the invasion of 
their rights. On the same 19th of April, eight years 
later, an order in the General's Orderly Book 
directed : 

" The Commander-in-Chief orders the cessation of 
hostilities, between the United States and the King of 
Great Britain, to be publicly proclaimed to-morrow at 
twelve at the New Building; and that the Proclama- 
tion, which will be communicated herewith, be read to- 
morrow evening at the head of every regiment and 
corps of the army ; after which the Chaplains with the 
several brigades will render thanks to Almighty God 
for all His mercies, particularly for His overruling the 
wrath of man to His glory, and causing the rage of 
war to cease among the nations." 

Washington and Governor Clinton dined on 
board the Admiral's frigate at Dobb's Ferry, and 
here, when Washington left, the first salute of 
seventeen guns was fired in honour of the American 
nation and the American commander. May 8th, very 
near the date when, 176 years before, the Jamestown 
pilgrims first beheld the beautiful shores of Hamp- 
ton Roads and the wide savannahs, down which 
poured the floods of the Chesapeake, the Potomac, 
and the James. 
I These 176 years had, indeed, seen marvellous 



372 George Washington 

things on this side of the Atlantic : — a speck, a dot 
of population here and there, great empty wilder- 
nesses filled with life and activity; vast solitary bays 
and rivers and estuaries, unflecked save by the white 
wing of crane and heron and gull, now swarming 
with sea-craft and sea-power of every description; 
towns and cities sprung as if by magic from reeds 
and marshes, from pine groves and magnolia groves ; 
everywhere, along hundreds of miles of coast-line, 
sturdy little commonwealths of English, Dutch, and 
Huguenot parentage founded and flourishing; 
everywhere, the vast interior receding before the ad- 
vancing settlers, new mountain chains crossed and 
conquered, rivers mightier still discovered and, like 
fiery steeds, made to feel the bit and bridle of in- 
cipient inland commerce : in short, a new, beautiful, 
glorious world as absolutely novel as the other side 
of the moon would be, could it be brought within 
the ken of the telescope. 

Never was a new world won and lost under more 
extraordinary circumstances. 

It was at this time that, exchanging momentarily 
the sword for the pen, Washington, urged by the 
necessity of the occasion — his ever-present dread of 
a dissolution of the Union, — wrote the Circular 
Letter to the governors of the thirteen States, which, 
for power and felicity of statement in its recogni- 
tion of the peculiar dangers menacing the Republic, 
has never been surpassed. In it he says : 

" There are four things, which, I humbly conceive, 
are essential to the well-being, I may even venture to 



A ''Merrie Christmas'' 373 

say, to the existence of the United States, as an in- 
dependent power. 

'' First. An indissoluble union of the States under 
one federal head. 

" Secondly. A sacred regard to public justice. 

" Thirdly. The adoption of a proper peace establish- 
ment; and, 

" Fourthly. The prevalence of that pacific and 
friendly disposition among the people of the United 
States, which will induce them to forget their local pre- 
judices and policies ; to make those mutual conces- 
sions, which are requisite to the general prosperity; 
and, in some instances, to sacrifice their individual 
advantages to the interest of the community. 

" These are the pillars on which the glorious fabric 
of our independency and national character must be 
supported. Liberty is the best basis ; and whoever 
would dare to sap the foundation, or overturn the struc- 
ture under whatever specious pretext he may attempt 
it, will merit the bitterest execration, and the severest 
punishment, which can be infhcted by his injured 
country." ^ 

Proceeding to discuss three of these four points 
in detail, he leaves behind him a " legacy " to his 
country, as he calls it, unexampled for wisdom, far- 
sightedness, and just appreciation of the perils of 
the moment. The noble words with which this com- 
position closes must for ever remove the doubt 
whether Washington was a Christian : 

'' I make it my earnest prayer, that God would have 
you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy 

^ Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. x, p. 257. 



374 Georg-e Washington 

protection ; that he would incHne the hearts of the citi- 
zens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience 
to government; to entertain a brotherly affection and 
love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the 
United States at large, and particularly for their 
brethren who have served in the field ; and finally, that 
he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all 
to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves 
with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, 
which were the characteristics of the Divine Author 
of our blessed religion, and without an humble imita- 
tion of whose example in these things, we can never 
hope to be a happy nation." 

One of the closest students of Washington's ca- 
reer presents, in striking terms, the facts of the 
General's unceasing devotion to religion and to re- 
ligious observances, the more striking because the 
critic is an Englishman : 

" Among the first five Presidents of the United 
States, including all who may be fairly classed as con- 
temporaries of the Revolution, no fewer than three 
were Episcopalians ; and a better Churchman, — or at 
all events, a better man who ranked himself as a 
Churchman, — than George Washington it would have 
been hard indeed to discover. When at home on the 
bank of the Potomac, he had always gone of a Sunday 
morning to what would have been called a distant 
church by any one except a Virginian equestrian ; and 
he spent Sunday afternoons, alone and unapproach- 
able, in his library. In war he found time for daily 
prayer and meditation, (as, by no wish of his, the 
absence of privacy, which is a feature in camp life, re- 



A ''Merrie Christmas" 375 

vealed to those who were immediately about him;) he 
attended pubHc worship himself; and by every availa- 
ble means he encouraged the practice of religion in his 
soldiers, to whom he habitually stood in a kind of 
fatherly relation. There are many pages in his Orderly 
Books which indicate a determination that the multitude 
of young fellows, who were entrusted to his charge, 
should have all possible facilities for being as well- 
behaved as in their natural native villages. The troops 
were excused fatigue-duty in order that they might not 
miss church. If public worship was interrupted on a 
Sunday, by the call to arms, a service was held on a 
convenient day in the ensuing week. The chaplains 
were exhorted to urge the soldiers that they ought to 
live and act like Christian men in times of distress and 
danger; and after every great victory, and more par- 
ticularly at the final proclamation of Peace, the Com- 
mander-in-Chief earnestly recommended that the army 
should universally attend the rendering of thanks to 
Almighty God ' with seriousness of deportment, and 
gratitude of heart.' 

*' It therefore was," continues Trevelyan, " the more 
noticeable that he ceased to be a regular Communicant 
as long as the war lasted. Washington always had his 
reasons for what he did, or left undone ; but he seldom 
gave them ; and his motive for abstaining from the 
Sacrament was not a subject on which he would be in- 
clined to break his ordinary rule of reticence. On one 
occasion during his campaigns he is known to have 
taken the Communion under circumstances which 
throw some light upon his inward convictions. While 
the army was quartered at Morristown, the Presby- 
terians of the place were about to hold their half-yearly 



376 George Washington 

administration. Washington paid a visit to their minis- 
ter, and enquired whether it accorded with the canon 
of his Church to admit Communicants of another de- 
nomination. ' Most certainly,' the clergyman answered. 
' Ours is not the Presbyterian table, General, but the 
Lord's table.' ' I am glad of it,' said Washington. 
' That is as it ought to be. Though a member of the 
Church of England, I have no exclusive partialities.' 
And, accordingly, on the next Sunday he took his 
place among the Communicants. Washington loved 
his own Church the best, and had no mind to leave it ; 
but he was not hostile to any faith which was sincerely 
held, and which exerted a restraining and correcting 
influence upon human conduct. ' I am disposed,' he 
once told LaFayette, ' to indulge the professors of 
Christianity with that road to Heaven which to them 
shall seem the most direct, plainest, easiest, and least 
liable to exception.' His feeling on this matter was 
accurately expressed in the instructions which he wrote 
out for Benedict Arnold, when that officer led an 
armed force of fierce and stern New England Protes- 
tants against Roman Catholic settlements in Canada. 
The whole paper was a lesson in the statesmanship 
which is founded on respect and consideration for 
others, and still remains well worth reading. In after 
years, as President of the United States, Washington 
enjoyed frequent opportunities for impressing his own 
sentiments and policy, in all that related to religion, 
upon the attention of his compatriots. The Churches 
of America were never tired of framing and present- 
ing Addresses which assured him of their confidence, 
veneration, and sympathy ; and he as invariably replied 
by congratulating them that in their happy country 



n 



A Merrie Christmas'' 377 

worship was free, and that men of every creed were 
eligible to every post of honour and authority." ^ 

For the " Circular Letter," a critic so calm and 
discriminating as Fiske cannot withhold his ad- 
miration : 

" The unparalleled grandeur of Washington's char- 
acter, his heroic services, and his utter disinterested- 
ness had given him such a hold upon the people as 
scarcely any other statesman known to history, save 
perhaps William the Silent, has ever possessed. The 
noble and sensible words of his circular letter were 
treasured up in the minds of all the best people in the 
country, and when the time for reforming the weak 
and disorderly government had come it was again to 
Washington that men looked as their leader and guide. 
But that time had not yet come." 

Indeed, the moral energy of the chief seemed to 
increase, as the ebbing tide of Revolution receded 
more and more from the physical passions aroused 
by the war ; his vision clearied ; he saw with strange 
clairvoyance far into the future of his country, and 
he endeavoured with all his might to forestall diffi- 

*Trevelyan, The American Revolution, part ii, vol. ii, p. 316. 

" We have abundant reason to rejoice " (so, in January, 
1793, the President told the Members of the New Church of 
Baltimore) "that every person may here worship God ac- 
cording to the dictates of his own heart. In this enHghtened 
age, and in this land of equal liberty, it is our boast that a 
man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the 
laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining, and of hold- 
ing, the highest offices that are known in the United 
States." — Ihid. 



378 George Washing-ton 

ciilties, remove obstacles, and smooth the way for 
a perfect union between the States. BeHeving, as 
he did, in " the pure and benign hght of Revela- 
tion " (his very words in the " Circular Letter "), 
he constantly invoked the Divine benediction on 
his work and prayed continually for the blessing 
of Heaven on the cause of American Independence. 
A recent historian asserts that England has had 
four great statesmen : William the Conqueror, es- 
tablisher of the realm ; Edward I, founder of the 
real England ; Cromwell, founder of the sea-power 
of England; Chatham, founder of the colonial em- 
pire. To these must certainly be added Washing- 
ton, founder of the Republic of the West. 

As the soldiers were about to separate, and the 
officers to return to their homes, the happy thought 
occurred of forming a permanent society of veterans 
of the Revolution who, as they were returning, lit- 
erally to the plough, bethought themselves of call- 
ing the association *' The Society of the Cincinnati," 
in memory of the Roman consul. 

" ' While contemplating a final separation of the 
officers of the army,' says Doctor Thacher, ' the ten- 
derest feelings of the heart had their afflicting opera- 
tions. It was at the suggestion of General Knox, and 
with the acquiescence of the Commander in Chief, 
that an expedient was devised by which a hope was 
entertained that their long cherished friendship and 
social intercourse might be perpetuated, and that at 
future periods they might annually communicate, and 
revive a recollection of the bonds by which they were 



A Merrie Christmas'' 379 

connected/ In pursuance of these suggestions a 
meeting was held on the loth day of May, at which a 
committee was appointed to revise the proposals for 
such an institution. The report of the committee was 
accepted at a meeting held May 13th, at the quarters 
of Baron Steuben, in the V>rplanck house, near Fishr 
kill Landing, and the * Society of the Cincinnati,' 
with a provision for the formation of State Societies, 
was organised. Washington officiated as president 
until his death." ^ 

A great outcry arose over the country, when it 
was found that the " Cincinnati " formed a kind of 
secret Masonic society whose honours were to be 
hereditary, and could be shared by distinguished 
foreigners. Even Washington showed a little of 
this alarm and fought for the abolition of this 
hereditary feature. 

November 2d saw one of the two last solemn 
acts of Washington's military career, his affec- 
tionate farewell to his troops at Princeton, where 
Congress had been lately sitting, and where his 
portrait was now to replace that of George III., in 
a frame which had received a volley of British 
bullets during the Trenton campaign. The pathos 
of the farewell is only exceeded by its good sense, 
lofty patriotism, and heartfelt gratitude over the 
success of the American arms. This success was 
abundantly acknowledged in the ten articles of the 
Treaty of Paris, signed by David Hartley on behalf 
of his Britannic Majesty, and by John Adams, 

* Baker, Itinerary of General Washington, vol. i, p. 300. 



380 George Washing^ton 

Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, September 3, 
1783. In the very first article *' The most serene 
and potent prince," George III., Elector, etc., 
acknowledges the complete independence of the 
thirteen colonies, fixes the vexed questions of 
boundary, throws open the fisheries to Americans 
(for which Adams had so stoutly contended), opens 
the navigation of the Mississippi to American and 
British trade and commerce (Jay's especial work) ; 
and left avenues open for the loyalists (" royalists," 
Franklin, resenting the implication, called them) 
to recover losses by legal process. 

Franklin had not lived nearly twenty years in 
Europe, studying its wire-drawn diplomacy, with- 
out profiting by his long experience. His hand was 
visible in every part of the Treaty, which was the 
articulate product of a world of inarticulate bab- 
bling, intrigue, wrangling, and controversy. Every 
point had to be fought over a hundred times: the 
bigotry and intolerance of the King were only 
equalled by the toughness and obstinacy of the 
American commissioners, who had behind them 
the immense prestige of the Bourbon alliance, ren- 
dering them tougher still. The absolutely essential 
thing was Independence; though gained, great 
economic questions like that of the Newfoundland 
fisheries loomed up, and at length melted placidly 
into the welcoming arms of the obstinate Adams; 
and the desire of the King to hedge in the colonies 
between the Atlantic and the Alleghanies, while the 
Mississippi swept majestically through British ter- 



A ''Merrie Christmas" 381 

ritory only, was thwarted by the watchful Jay. Of 
Franklin, an eminent English historian writes : 

" Franklin's works were well known in France 
through several translations ; his great discovery of 
the lightning conductor had been made when the 
Parisian enthusiasm for physical science was at its 
height, and it was soon found that the man was at 
least as remarkable as his works. Dressed with an 
almost Quaker simplicity, his thin grey hair not pow- 
dered according to the general fashion, but covered 
with a fur cap, he formed a singular and striking 
figure in the brilliant and artificial society of the 
French capital. His eminently venerable appearance, 
the quaint quiet dignity of his manner, the mingled 
wit and wisdom of his conversation, the unfailing 
tact, shrewdness, and self-possession which he showed, 
whether he was negotiating with French statesmen or 
moving in a social sphere so unlike that from which 
he had arisen, impressed all who came in contact with 
him. Vergennes declared him to be the only Amer- 
ican in whom he put full confidence. Turgot in an 
immortal line, described him as having torn the light- 
ning from heaven and the sceptre from the tyrant's 
hand.^ 

"Voltaire complimented him in his most graceful 
phrases, and expressed his pride that he was himself 
able to address him in, * the language of Franklin.' * 
Poets, philosophers, men and women of fashion, were 
alike at his feet, and all the enthusiasms and Utopias 

* " The famous line, ' Eripuit ccclo fulmen, sceptrumque 
tyrannis,' was perhaps suggested by a passage in Manihus." 
— Lecky. 



382 Georg-e Washington 

of France seemed to gather round that cahn Amer- 
ican, who, under the appearance of extreme simpH- 
city, concealed the astuteness of the most accom- 
pHshed diplomatist, and who never for a moment lost 
sight of the object at which he aimed. His corre- 
spondence and his Journal show clearly the half- 
amused, half-contemptuous, satisfaction with which 
he received the homage that was bestowed on him. 
It became the fashion to represent him as the ideal 
philosopher of Rousseau. He was compared by his 
admirers to Phocion, to Socrates, to William Tell, 
and even to Jesus Christ. His head, accompanied by 
the line of Turgot, appeared everywhere on snuff 
boxes and medallions and rings. He was the idol 
alike of the populace and of society, and he used all 
his influence to hurry France into war." ^ 

The drama of the Revolution could not close 
more fittingly than with Washington's beautiful 
Avords to Congress, as he handed over his sword to 
General Mifflin, president of that body. He had 
journeyed to Philadelphia and then to Annapolis 
on his way to Mount Vernon, which, with a single 
exception, he had seen but once in eight long years. 
It was nearly Christmas Eve, and the soul of the 
Commander-in-chief doubtless thrilled with emotion 
as he thought of the blazing log fires, the Christmas 
cheer, above all, the beaming faces awaiting him at 
the old mansion. About this place clustered now 
all his most precious hopes and aspirations — the 
tranquillity for which he had sighed so long, the 

^Lecky, England in the XVIIIth Century, vol. iv, p. 51. 



A ''Merrie Christmas" 383 

pleasant country occupations which had incessantly 
haunted him amid the turmoil of camps, intimate 
communion with his chosen friends, his own fire- 
side bright with a thousand memories of joy and 
happiness; the fishing, the fox-hunting, the delight- 
ful runs across country, the care of his estates, " the 
glass of wine and bit of mutton " which, he as- 
serted, stood ever ready for his friends at his table 
— if they wanted more, they must go elsewhere : all 
this, and a thousand more things must have flowed 
now in a golden stream through that noble mind, 
now emptied of the cares of command, and ready 
to fill itself with the joys of home. 

On the morning of December 27,, 1783, the little 
town of Annapolis with its memories of good Queen 
Anne, its bright Severn River winding in and out 
the rich plantations, and its throng of citizens and 
congressmen witnessed a scene which Thackeray 
has embodied in some of his most fascinating pages. 

" The alterations at Carlton House being finished, 
we lay before our readers a description of the state 
apartments as they appeared on the loth instant, 
when H. R. H. gave a grand ball to the principal 
nobility and gentry. . . . The entrance to the state 
room fills the mind with an inexpressible idea of 
greatness and splendour. 

"The state chair is of a gold frame, covered with 
crimson damask ; on each corner of the feet is a lion's 
head, expressive of fortitude and strength ; the feet 
of the chair have serpents twining round them, to 
denote wisdom. Facing the throne, appears the helmet 



384 Georg^e Washington 

of Minerva; and over the windows, glory is repre- 
sented by Saint George with a superb gloria. 

" But the saloon may be styled the chef-d'oeuvre, 
and in every ornament discovers great invention. It is 
hung with a figured lemon satin. The window-cur- 
tains, sofas, and chairs are of the same colour. The 
ceiling is ornamented with emblematical paintings, rep- 
resenting the Graces and Muses, together with 
Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, and Paris. Two ormolu 
chandeliers are placed here. It is impossible by ex- 
pression to do justice to the extraordinary workman- 
ship, as well as design, of the ornam.ents. They each 
consist of a palm, branching out in five directions for 
the reception of lights. A beautiful figure of a rural 
nymph is represented entwining the stems of the tree 
with wreaths of flowers. In the centre of the room is 
a rich chandelier. To see this apartment dans son plus 
beau jour, it should be viewed in the glass over the 
chimney-piece. The range of apartments from the 
saloon to the ball-room, when the doors are open, 
formed one of the grandest spectacles that ever was 
beheld." 

In the Gentleman's Magazine, for the very same 
month and year — March, 1784 — is an account of 
another festival, in which another great gentleman 
of English extraction is represented as taking a 
principal share: 

** According to order, H. E. the Commander-in- 
Chief was admitted to a public audience of Congress ; 
and, being seated, the President, after a pause, in- 
formed him that the United States assembled were 



A ''Merrie Christmas'' 385 

ready to receive his communications. Whereupon he 
arose, and spoke as follows: 

'' ' Mr. President, 

" ' The great events, on v^^hich my resignation 
depended, having at length taken place, I have now the 
honour of offering my sincere congratulations to Con- 
gress, and of presenting myself before them, to sur- 
render into their hands the trust committed to me, and 
to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of 
my country. 

'' ' Happy in the confirmation of our independence 
and sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity af- 
forded the United States of becoming a respectable 
nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I 
accepted with diffidence; a diffidence in my abilities 
to accomplish so arduous a task, which, however, was 
superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our 
cause, the support of the supreme power of the Union, 
and the patronage of Heaven. 

** ' The successful termination of the war has verified 
the most sanguine expectations; and my gratitude for 
the interposition of Providence, and the assistance I 
have received from my countrymen, increases with 
every revievv^ of the momentous contest. 

" ' While I repeat my obligations to the army in gen- 
eral, I should do injustice to my own feelings not to 
acknowledge, in this place, the peculiar services and 
distinguished merits of the gentlemen, who have been 
attached to my person during the war. It was im- 
possible that the choice of confidential officers to 
compose my family should have been more fortunate. 
Permit me. Sir, to recommend in particular those, 
who have continued in service to the present moment, 



386 George Washing-ton 

as worthy of the favorable notice and patronage of 
Congress. 

" ' I consider it an indispensable duty to close this 
last solemn act of my official life, by commending the 
interests of our dearest country to the protection of 
Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence 
of them to his holy keeping. 

'' ' Having now finished the work assigned me, I re- 
tire from the great theatre of action; and, bidding an 
affectionate farewell to this august body under whose 
orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commis- 
sion, and take my leave of all the employments of 
public life.' 

" To which the President replied : 

" ' Sir, having defended the standard of liberty in 
the New World, having taught a lesson useful to those 
who inflict and those who feel oppression, you retire 
with the blessings of your fellow-citizens ; though the 
glory of your virtues will not terminate with your mili- 
tary command, but will descend to remotest ages.' 

*' Which was the most splendid spectacle ever wit- 
nessed ; — the opening feast of Prince George in Lon- 
don, or the resignation of Washington ? Which is the 
noble character for after ages to admire ; — yon fribble 
dancing in lace and spangles, or yonder hero who 
sheathes his sword after a life of spotless honour, a 
purity unreproached, a courage indomitable, and a 
consummate victory? Which of these is the true gen- 
tleman ? What is it to be a gentleman ? Is it to have 
lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to keep your honour 
virgin ; to have the esteem of your fellow-citizens, and 
the love of your fireside ; to bear good fortune meekly ; 
to suffer evil with constancy ; and through evil or good 



A ''Merrie Christmas" 387 

to maintain truth always? Show me the happy man 
whose Hfe exhibits these quahties, and him we will 
salute as gentleman, whatever his rank may be; show 
me the prince who possesses them, and he may be sure 
of our love and loyalty." ^ 

Millions of grateful hearts must, indeed, have 
cried " Merry Christmas " to the simple horseman 
who next day, unattended, started, a plain Virginia 
cavalier, on his way back to Mount Vernon. 

* Thackeray, Four Georges, p. 114.^-The exact words of 
Washington are taken as found in his " Farewell Address," 
Appendix, Lodge's Story of the Revolution; W. C. Ford, 
vol. X, p. 338. 



CHAPTER XIX 

BIRTH OF THE CONSTITUTION 

THE beautiful scene enacted at Annapolis, when 
Washington, with all the dignity of a simple 
citizen, surrendered his sword into the hands of the 
Continental Congress, and retired to Mount Vernon 
to spend his first Christmas in eight years at home, 
seemed to all to mark the beginning of a gracious 
and benign era of peace and happiness, quiet and 
plenty for the worn-out soldiers, settling of long- 
delayed accounts between debtor and creditor, peo- 
pling of the seas with white sails busily conveying 
the products of the soil to all lands, opening of vast 
stretches of Western water and wilderness to crowd- 
ing immigration, and a general outburst of pros- 
perity on the borders, and in the bosom, of the 
thirteen newly emancipated sovereignties. Scholars 
eagerly read their Virgils, and recalled the eloquent 
lines in which '' Saturnia regna " were to return, 
and a Golden Age spread itself over regions where 
only stone and bronze and iron — alas, too often 
blood-stained — had hitherto been the symbols and 
the implements of a rude and confused civilisation. 

" ' We have been subdued, it is true,' said an English 
Statesman, ' but, thank Heaven, the brain and the 
muscle which achieved the victorv were nurtured by 

388 



Birth of the Constitution 389 

English blood ; Old England, upon the Island of Great 
Britain, has been beaten only by Young England, in 
America/ " ^ 

The vanquished party in the great international 
conflict might well take this unction to its soul, but 
little did even it know at that time of the vast geo- 
graphical problems involved in the Treaty of Paris. 
A far-seeing Spaniard, however, lifted the veil and 
revealed to his sovereign the true situation : 

" This territory the French government was very 
unwilling to leave in American hands. The possi- 
bility of enormous expansion which it would afford to 
the new nation was distinctly foreseen by sagacious 
men. Count Aranda, the representative of Spain in 
these negotiations, wrote a letter to his king just after 
the treaty was concluded, in which he uttered this nota- 
ble prophecy : * This federal republic is born a pigmy. 
A day will come when it will be a giant, even a colos- 
sus, formidable in these countries. Liberty of con- 
science, the facility for establishing a new population 
on immense lands, as well as the advantages of the new 
government, will draw thither farmers and artisans 
from all the nations. In a few years we shall watch 
with grief, the tyrannical existence of this same colos- 
sus.' The letter went on to predict that the Americans 
would presently get possession of Florida and attack 
Mexico." 2 

This region of the '' rainbow gold " was, indeed, 
a region to which vast territorial possibilities hung, 

* Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, Preface. 
*Fiske, Critical Period of American History, p. 19. 



390 Georg-e Washingfton 

not as the fabled gold glimmers and then vanishes 
from the end of the rainbow never to reappear, but 
a region of solid gold, of boundless wealth, of re- 
sources beyond the calculation of any arithmetic 
then available, of great and shining streams sweep- 
ing to a central river, soon to swarm with flat-boat 
and barge and raft and steamboat, driving out the 
primitive bateau and canoe of the trapper and the 
Indian; of plains sweeping like grassy seas down 
the winding rivers, and filled with herds of buf- 
faloes ; of forests rich in every species of vegetation, 
of fauna and flora known to the dreaming scientists 
of Europe, and in many things that had never en- 
tered into their wildest dreams ; and beyond the cen- 
tral river, a land full of mountains, fairy-like in 
their beauty, seamed with silver and gold, full of 
prehistoric remains, alive with antelope and coyote, 
with big game and marvellous peaks, lakes and gey- 
sers. Through this mighty region, roamed scat- 
tered bands of Cherokees and Chickasaws and the 
painted population of the Six Nations, numerous 
and unstable as the bears and wolves and vultures 
that haunted thicket and undergrowth, ready to 
pounce upon the hated white man without a mo- 
ment's notice. 

Here, even while the bloody War of Independ- 
ence was raging along the Atlantic line, another 
war was raging, thinner, paler perhaps, but no less 
fierce and passionate, almost elemental in its fury^ 
presenting the curious spectacle of one war be- 
hind another. In the East, along the extended 



Birth of the Constitution 391 

coast-line, the British encircled the colonies with a 
host of ships and red-coats, threatening death and 
destruction to Washington and his generals. In 
the West, the Red Indian, the treacherous Tory, 
the disaffected tradesman, the mongrel half-breed 
of no discernible nationality but ravenous for 
plunder, skulked around the Great Lakes, the head- 
waters of the Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Holston, 
rendering night hideous with whoop and yell, and 
day crimson with scalping-knife and tomahawk. 

Into this region entered a young Virginian, 
twenty-five years of age, commissioned by Patrick 
Henry, Governor of Virginia, and accompanied 
by 170 or 180 riflemen clad in buckskin. George 
Rogers Clark had been given full powers, in 1778, 
to invade and overrun this Terra Incognita, back 
up the English confederacy with the Indians, pla- 
cate the French communities scattered here and 
there in the region of the Illinois, and capture or 
dismantle the forts at Kaskaskia and Vincennes. 

After incredible exertions, recalling those of 
Benedict Arnold in his famous march on Quebec 
through the wilds of Maine, Clark accomplished all 
this, marched hundreds of miles through a flooded 
wilderness, took Hamilton and Rocheblave, the 
English and French commanders, prisoners, and 
sent them off to Virginia ; thus, in a single wonder- 
ful campaign, with only two hundred men and " a 
spark of genius and imagination in his brain," con- 
quering for his country the immense Northwestern 



392 George Washing-ton 

Territory out of which, later, five empire-Hke States 
were carved. 

" The victory was complete. It was a very shining 
and splendid feat of arms. In the dead of winter, with 
a large part of his force composed of men of doubtful 
loyalty and of another race, Clark had marched across 
two hundred and forty miles of flooded wilderness. 
With no arms but rifles, he had taken a heavily stock- 
aded fort, defended by artillery and garrisoned by 
regular troops under the command of a brave and 
capable soldier. The victory was not only complete, but 
final. Clark had broken the English campaign in the 
West; he had shattered their Indian confederacy, and 
wrested from them a region larger than most European 
kingdoms. He had opened the way, never to be closed 
again, to the advance of the American pioneers, the 
vanguard of the American people in their march across 
the continent. When the treaty of peace was made at 
Paris, the boundary of the United States went to the 
Lakes on the North, and to the Mississippi on the West, 
and that it did so was due to Clark and his riflemen. 
It was one of the sad questions, of which history offers 
so many, why the conqueror of Vincennes never 
reached again the heights of achievement which he 
attained in the first flush of manhood. But, what- 
ever the answer may be, the great deed that he did 
was one of the glories of the Revolution which can 
never be dimmed, and which finds its lasting monu- 
ment in the vast country then wrested from the British 
crown by American riflemen, inspired by the brilliant 
leadership of George Rogers Clark." ^ 

^ Lodge, The Story of the Revolution, p. 352. 



Birth of the Constitution 393 

The achievement met with an enthusiastic recep- 
tion from Patrick Henry, who communicated the 
event to the Virginia legislature: 

" Williamsburg, November 14, 1778. 

'' Gentlemen, — The executive power of this state 
having been impressed with a strong apprehension of 
incursions on the frontier settlements from the savages 
situated about the Illinois, and supposing the danger 
would be greatly obviated by an enterprise against the 
English forts and possessions in that country, which 
were well known to inspire the savages with their 
bloody purposes against us, sent a detachment of mili- 
tia, consisting of one hundred and seventy or eighty 
men commanded by Colonel George Rogers Clark, on 
that service some time last spring. By dispatches which 
I have just received from Colonel Clark, it appears 
that his success has equalled the most sanguine ex- 
pectations. He has not only reduced Fort Chartres 
and its dependencies, but has struck such a terror into 
the Indian tribes between that settlement and the lakes 
that no less than five of them, vk., the Puans, Sacks, 
Renards, Powtowantanies, and Miamis, who had 
received the hatchet from the English emissaries, have 
submitted to our arms all their English presents, and 
bound themselves by treaties and promises to be peace- 
ful in the future. 

** The great Blackbird, the Chappowow chief, has 
also sent a belt of peace to Colonel Clark, influenced, 
he supposes, by the dread of Detroit's being reduced 
by Americans' arms. This latter place, according to 
Colonel Clark's representation, is at present defended 
by so inconsiderable a garrison and so scantily fur- 
nished with provisions, for which they must be still 



394 George Washington 

more distressed by the loss of supplies from the II- 
Hnois, that it might be reduced by any number of men 
above five hundred. The governor of that place, Mr. 
Hamilton, was exerting himself to engage the savages 
to assist him in retaking the places that had fallen into 
our hands ; but the favorable impression made on the 
Indians in general in that quarter, the influence of the 
French on them, and the reenforcement of their miHtia 
Colonel Clark expected, flattered him that there was 
little danger to be apprehended. ... If the party 
under Colonel Clark can cooperate in any respect with 
the measures Congress are pursuing or have in view, I 
shall with pleasure give him the necessary orders. In 
order to improve and secure the advantages gained by 
Colonel Clark, I propose to support him with a reen- 
forcement of militia. But this will depend on the 
pleasure of the assembly, to whose consideration the 
measure is submitted. 

" The French inhabitants have manifested great zeal 
and attachment to our cause, and insist on garrisons 
remaining with them under Colonel Clark. This I am 
induced to agree to, because the safety of our own 
frontiers as well as that of these people demands a com- 
pliance with this request. Were it possible to secure 
the St. Lawrence and prevent the English attempts up 
that river by seizing some post on it, peace with the 
Indians would seem to me to be secured. 

" With great regard I have the honor to be, Gent., 
" Your most obedient Servant, 

" P. Henry." ' 

Thus was the Great West saved to the United 
States. 

^ Tyler, Patrick Henry, p. 230. 



Birth of the Constitution 395 

But peaceful and glorious as all things now 
seemed to the Americans, the situation was still 
fraught with perils. Washington, himself, strikes 
the keynote of it when in January, 1784, he writes 
to Benjamin Harrison : 

" At Mount Vernon. 
" The disinclination of the individual States to yield 
competent powers to Congress for the federal govern- 
ment, their unreasonable jealousy of that body and of 
one another, and the disposition, which seems to per- 
vade each, of being all-wise and all-powerful within 
itself, will, if there is not a change in the system, be our 
downfall as a nation." 

This bitter thought marred for him the serenity 
of Mount Vernon and its expected happiness, which 
he thus describes to the Marquis LaFayette : 

'' At Mount Vernon. 
** At length, my dear Marquis, I am become a private 
citizen on the banks of the Potomac ; and under the 
shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree, free from 
the bustle of a camp, and the busy scenes of public life, 
I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments, 
of which the soldier who is ever in pursuit of fame, 
the statesman, whose watchful days and sleepless nights 
are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare 
of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if 
this globe was insufficient for us all, and the courtier, 
who is always watching the countenance of his prince, 
in hopes of catching a gracious smile, can have very 
little conception." 



396 George Washington 

Old habits pursued him amid his agricultural 
avocations, as he thus observes to General Knox : 

" I am just beginning to experience that ease and 
freedom from public cares, which, however desirable, 
takes some time to realize ; for, strange as it may seem, 
it is nevertheless true, that it was not till lately I could 
get the better of my usual custom of ruminating, as 
soon as I waked in the morning, on the business of the 
ensuing day ; and of my surprise at finding, after re- 
volving many things in my mind, that I was no longer 
a public man, nor had anything to do with public 
transactions." 

An eminent foreigner seeing him at this time, 
apparently nothing more than a fine old Virginia 
gentleman, writes thus to Rayneval : 

" The estate of General Washington not being more 
than fifteen leagues from Annapolis I accepted an in- 
vitation that he gave me to go and pass several days 
there, and it is from his house that I have the honor to 
write to you. After having seen him on my arrival in 
this continent, in the midst of his camp and in the 
tumult of arms, I have the pleasure to see him a simple 
citizen, enjoying in the repose of his retreat the glory 
which he has so justly acquired. . . . He dresses in 
a gray coat like a Virginia farmer, and nothing about 
him recalls the recollection of the important part which 
he has played except the great number of foreigners 
who come to see him." 

Even the venerable order of Masons took part 
in this simple life, and elected him an honorary 
member of Lodge No. 39, at Alexandria, the same 




MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY KNOX. 
From the painting by Gilbert Stuart, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 



Birth of the Constitution 397 

year. His architectural instincts, too, awoke viv- 
idly, and he began to plan extensions and improve- 
ments to his beautifully situated mansion. 

" At this time Washington was engaged in the pros- 
ecution of improvements at Mount Vernon, the prin- 
cipal being additions to the house originally built by 
Lawrence Washington (1744), which was of the old 
gable-roofed style, with only four rooms upon each 
floor. It was about one-third the size of the present 
building, and in the alteration it was made to occupy 
the central portion, the two ends having been built at 
the same time. The mansion, when completed by 
General Washington, at the close of 1785 (and as it 
now appears), was of the most substantial framework, 
two stories in height, ninety-six feet in length, thirty 
feet in depth, with a piazza fifteen feet in width, ex- 
tending along the eastern or river front." ^ 

It was difficult, of course, for so active a mind to 
settle down at once from the cares of command, the 
thousand anxieties and occupations of the camp, and 
the multitudinous correspondence with Congress, 
pursued through so many years, and the thirty-seven 
volumes of his military and private letters, now in 
the archives at Washington, often attest the actual 
hardships of the " peaceful " life. A delightful visit 
or two from LaFayette in 1784, and the warm pub- 
lic congratulations of his native State; touring 
around among his estates in Virginia, and the wilds 
of Pennsylvania rendered memorable by Braddock's 

* Baker, Washington after the Revolution, vol. ii, p. 9-10. 



398 George Washing^ton 

defeat, during which he waged war on '' squatters " 
on his lands; horseback journeys for hundreds of 
miles to view and review lands new and old — 
Washington always had an eye remarkably keen 
for ''bottom" lands; visits from Englishmen and 
foreigners of all descriptions, varied the idyllic life 
of the statesman, but did not quell his uneasy fears 
as to the future of his country. 

An honest Briton, dropping in accidentally at the 
hospitable mansion about this time, leaves an in- 
teresting picture of General and Mrs. Washington : 

" I crossed the river from Maryland into Virginia, 
near to the renowned General Washington's, where 
I had the honour to spend some time, and was kindly 
entertained with that worthy family. As to the 
General, if we may judge by the countenance, he is 
what the world says of him, a shrewd, good-natured, 
plain, humane man, about fifty-five years of age, 
and seems to wear well, being healthful and active, 
straight, well made, and about six feet high. He 
keeps a good table, which is always open to those 
of a genteel appearance. He does not use many 
Frenchified congees, or flattering useless words with- 
out meaning, which savours more of deceit than an 
honest heart ; but on the contrary, his words seem to 
point at truth and reason, and to spring from the 
fountain of a heart, which being good of itself, cannot 
be suspicious of others, till facts unriddle designs, 
which evidently appeared to me by a long tale that 
he told me about Arnold's manoeuvres, far-fetched 
schemes, and deep-laid designs, to give him and his 
army up, above a month before the affair happened- 



Birth of the Constitution 399 

and though he said he wondered at many things that 
he observed in Arnold's conduct, yet he had not the 
least suspicion of any treachery going on, till the 
thing happened, and then he could trace back and 
see through his intentions from the beginning; which, 
from the General's behaviour to him, I am well ap- 
prized, seems to be the highest sin of ingratitude that 
a man could be guilty of. 

'' The General's house is rather warm, snug, con- 
venient, and useful, than ornamental. The size is 
what ought to suit a man of about two or three thou- 
sand a year in England. The out-offices are good, 
and seem to be not long built ; and he was making 
more offices at each wing to the front of the house 
which added more to ornament than real use. The 
situation is high, and commands a beautiful prospect 
of the river which parts Virginia and Maryland, but 
in other respects the situation seems to be out of the 
world, being chiefly surrounded by woods, and far 
from any great road or thoroughfare, and nine miles 
from Alexandria in Virginia. The General's lady is 
a hearty, comely, discreet, affable woman, some few 
years older than himself; she was a widow when he 
married her. He has no children by her. The Gen- 
eral's house is open to poor travellers as well as rich ; 
he gives diet and lodging to all that come that way, 
which indeed cannot be many, without they go out 
of their way on purpose. . . . 

'' I have travelled and seen a great deal of the 
world, have conversed with all degrees of people, and 
have remarked that there are only two persons in the 
world which have every one's good word, and those 
are — the Queen of England and General Washing- 



400 Georg-e Washing-ton 

ton, which I never heard friend or foe speak slightly 
of." ^ 

Difficulties of language made no difficulty to 
admiring foreigners, who occasionally addressed 
Washington in an idiom all their own. Thus, one 
of the minor German potentates writes at this time : 

'' My General and my Hero. — I have just re- 
ceived your picture, and I am entirely taken up to give 
it a sufficient embellishment by placing it between the 
King of Prussia and his illustrious brother Henry. 
You see that this is a trio very harmonical. ... It 
must be that the picture resembles, for I regard it as 
the greatest ornament of my fortress." 

A charming trait of the General's solicitude for 
his guests crops out in the writings of a traveller 
and diarist of the times : 

" I had feasted my imagination for several days in 
the near prospect of a visit to Mount Vernon, the seat 
of Washington. No pilgrim ever approached Mecca 
with deeper enthusiasm. I arrived there, in the after- 
noon of January 23d [ ?] '85. ... I found him at table 
with Mrs. Washington and his private family, and 
was received in the native dignity and with that ur- 
banity so peculiarly combined in the character of a 
soldier and eminent private gentleman. He soon put 
me at ease, by unbending in a free and affable con- 
versation. . . . 

" The first evening I spent under the wing of his 
hospitality, we sat a full hour at table by ourselves, 

^ Varlo, Floating Ideas of Nature, suited to the Philosopher, 
Farmer, and Mechanic. — Published in London, in 1796. 



Birth of the Constitution 401 

without the least interruption, after the family had 
retired. I was extremely oppressed by a severe cold 
and excessive coughing, contracted by the exposure 
of a harsh winter journey. He pressed me to use 
some remedies, but I declined doing so. As usual 
after retiring, my coughing increased. When some 
time had elapsed, the door of my room was gently 
opened, and on drawing my bed-curtains, to my utter 
astonishment, I beheld Washington himself, standing 
at my bed-side, with a bowl of hot tea in his hand." ^ 

Washington, standing with a cup of hot tea in 
his hand at the bedside of a suffering guest, is a 
pleasant pendant to the Washington of the ser- 
pentine walks, the fragrant shrubberies, the old- 
fashioned climbing roses, and tree-planting instincts, 
who beautified the old-world gardens of Mount 
Vernon, stocked its parks with deer, enriched the 
neighbourhood with a fine breed of French stag- 
hounds, and bred '' burros " from '' Jacks and Jen- 
nies " presented by his most Catholic Majesty, the 
King of Spain. 

" Gliding gently down the stream of life " as he 
might, in his oft-repeated phrase, consider himself 
to be, the gently-flowing stream, however, was still 
to be interrupted by many a sudden twist and turn, 
perilous fall, and world of troubled waters. The 
first intimation of it occurs in his oft-returning 
dread of a dissolving Union, now that the main 
object of that Union, Independence, had been 
achieved, and the sovereignty of each individual 

* Memoirs of Elkanah Watson. 



402 Georgfe Washington 

State began, with implacable obstinacy, to assert 
itself. 

Here, precisely as, in the Germany and the Italy 
of our day and of all days, Prussian contended with 
Bavarian, Hanoverian with Prussian and Saxon, 
and Wiirtemberger with Rhinelander, Tuscan with 
Roman, so in " the brave old days of 'j(i,'' the 
men of Connecticut and the men of New York, 
the burghers of Jersey and the Quakers of Penn- 
sylvania, the Puritans of Massachusetts and the 
cavaliers of Virginia and Maryland began, after 
Yorktown, to eye each other with mutual jealousy 
and distrust; odious nicknames were freely flung 
by one section at another; unbounded and, it may 
be added, unfounded claims began to be set up by 
Eastern States to the millions of fertile acres of 
the unexplored West; the disbanded armies of the 
Revolution, turned loose and now foot-free, began 
to demand more pay for their unrequited services, 
band together, and excite insurrection ; retaliatory 
duties between the States were in danger of being 
enacted if not actually begun, '' free trade " States 
and " tariff " States were about to spring into 
existence, and plague, pestilence, and famine were 
threatened. 

Indeed, the few years from the Treaty of Paris 
to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, in 
1788, were the most critical in the whole history 
of American Independence. 

Affairs at this juncture are graphically depicted 
by a recent historian: 



Birth of the Constitution 403 

" The open contempt with which, in all parts of 
the country, the people treated the recommendation 
of Congress concerning the refugees and the payment 
of the debts, was no more than any man of ordinary 
sagacity could have foretold. Indeed, the state into 
which Congress had fallen was most wretched. Rudely 
formed amid the agonies of a revolution, the Con- 
federation had never been revised and brought nearer 
to perfection in a season of tranquillity. Each of the 
thirteen States the Union bound together retained all 
the rights of sovereignty, and asserted them punctil- 
iously against the central government. Each reserved 
to itself the right to put up mints, to strike money, to 
levy taxes, to raise armies, to say what articles should 
come into its ports free and what should be made to 
pay duty. Toward the Continental Government they 
acted precisely as if they were dealing with a foreign 
power. In truth, one of the truest patriots of New 
England had not been ashamed to stand up in his 
place in the Massachusetts House of Deputies and 
speak of the Congress of the States as a foreign gov- 
ernment. Every act of that body was scrutinized 
with the utmost care. The transfer of the most trivial 
authority beyond the borders of the State was made 
with protestations, with trembling, and with fear. 
Under such circumstances, each delegate felt himself 
to have much the character, and to be clothed with 
very much of the power, of ambassadors. He was 
not responsible to men, he was responsible to a State. 
The opinions which he expressed, the measures which 
he advanced, \vere not those of a great party, nor 
even such as found favor among the men of his own 
district or of his own town. They were such as he 



404 George Washing-ton 

believed to be in accordance with tlie will of a major- 
ity of the members of that Legislature which had sent 
him to the post he filled. To him the smallest interest 
of the little patch of earth he called his native State 
was of far more importance than the greatest interest 
of the Confederation of States." ^ 

The distractions of the times were further en- 
hanced by the rude treatment of the Tories, 100,000 
of whom, it is reckoned, were driven out of the 
country between 1783 and 1785, despite the most 
solemn treaty obligation. Repudiation of the 
$170,000,000, which Jefferson calculated the war 
had cost, was threatened. Whole neighbourhoods 
were depopulated by the disfranchisement of loyal- 
ists. A war of pamphlets, sermons, broadsides, 
newspaper scurrilities, under the leadership of clas- 
sically named " Phocions," " Brutuses," and "Men- 
tors," fired the colonial empire from one end to 
the other. Private obligations and public cove- 
nants, international law — " that refuge of highway- 
men and robbers/' as Voltaire called it — and mu- 
nicipal and State responsibilities were alike threat- 
ened. Shay's Rebellion broke out in Massachusetts, 
in resistance to the weak federal authority, and, 
but for the timely energy and patriotism of General 
Lincoln and the men of Massachusetts, who crushed 
it mercilessly, would have swamped the Union or 
cleft it in piecest " In a letter to Washington, 

* McMaster, History of the People of the United States, 
vol. i, p. 130. 



Birth of the Constitution 405 

General Knox observes," says McMaster, " that no 
toasts were drunk in the army but * A hoop to the 
barrel ' and ' Cement to the Union.' " 

A hoopless barrel, an uncemented Union, it 
seemed really to be. 

Added to all this was the confusion worse con- 
founded which reigned in the currency. Even when 
people were ready and willing to pay their just 
debts, it was almost impossible to do so, without a 
dictionary in many tongues at one's elbow, able to 
interpret the miscellaneous contents of the moth- 
eaten stockings which, in 1784, took the place of 
a natural and national currency. The antiquary of 
to-day would find the coins of the Revolution only 
in junk-shops, in out-of-the-way corners of mu- 
seums, or in private cabinets, and would take curi- 
ous delight in deciphering the blurred images and 
superscriptions on the golden '' Joes," guineas, and 
moidores, the silver " bits," '' pistareens," shillings, 
picayunes, and mill-dollars of the Spanish and New 
England coasts, and, above all, the comical '' shin- 
plasters " and faded paper, telling in grandiloquent 
language how such and such a scrap of disreputable 
rag-money, marked with some strange device, was 
worth so-and-so in '' Continental " currency. There 
were five different values to a '' dollar," and as 
many to shillings. To this day, the mountain peo- 
ple of Virginia rudely reckon in shillings (16^ 
cents), '' nine-pences " (i2>^), and '' four-pences," 
and '' bits " and " picayunes " form staples of cur- 



4o6 George Washington 

rency in New Orleans and the Gulf States. Clipping 
and counterfeiting were rife. 

Out of this anarchy of the counting-room, Gou- 
verneur Morris drew the Union, by his organisation 
of the money system on its present decimal system 
of dimes and dollars. 

At this point, critical enough in the history of 
the United States, the inland navigation scheme of 
Washington, Madison, and their friends — a scheme 
by which the waters of the Chesapeake, the Po- 
tomac, and the James were to be connected by canals 
with the territories of the West — came into promi- 
nence and, merely local at first, wrought itself into 
the favour first of Virginia and Maryland, then at- 
tracted the interest of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and 
New York, and at last, as recent historians like 
Fiske and McMaster have remarked, became the 
germ of the new Federal Union of 1787-88, and 
the true foundation of the United States as they 
exist to-day. 

Washington, perhaps the best practical geogra- 
pher of the time, — better even than Peter Jefferson, 
father of the President, — who had constructed a 
valuable map of Virginia, was thoroughly familiar 
by actual observation with most of this Western 
country, and seeing it filling up rapidly as " Ohio," 
" Kentucky," " Franklin," and other incipient 
States, with a tide of immigration from the East, 
recognised the necessity of the vast scheme of in- 
ternal communication, later realised in the James 
River and Kanawha Canal, the Chesapeake and Ohio 



Birth of the Constitution 407 

Canal, the National Road from Cumberland to 
Jefferson City, and other connecting schemes. 

His alert mind was again turned at this time to a 
plan for draining and reclaiming the Dismal Swamp ; 
but it was the Potomac scheme, with the regulation 
of the trade relations between Maryland and Vir- 
ginia, which drew him to bring the matter before 
the Virginia legislature, and induce it to arrange a 
commercial convention with Maryland, to meet at 
Annapolis. 

" To Richard Henry Lee 

" The Assemblies of Virginia and Maryland have 
now under consideration the extension of the inland 
navigation of the rivers Potomac and James, and 
opening a communication between them and the 
western waters. They seem fully impressed with the 
political as well as the commercial advantages, which 
would result from the accomplishment of these great 
objects, and I hope will embrace the present moment 
to put them in a train for execution." 

To LaFayette he wrote as follows : 

" I am here since December 20 with General Gates, 
at the request of the Assembly of Virginia to fix mat- 
ters with the Assembly of this State respecting the 
extension of the inland navigation of the Potomac, 
and the communication beween it and the western 
waters." 

Madison eagerly seconded Washington's plan and, 
two years later, matters came to a head. 

" The commissioners, after preparing the terms of 
a compact between Virginia and Maryland for the 



4o8 Georg-e Washing-ton 

jurisdiction over the waters of the Chesapeake Bay 
and the rivers that were common to both States, took 
up matters of general poHcy, and decided to recom- 
mend to the two States a uniformity of duties on im- 
ports, a uniformity of commercial regulations, and a 
uniformity of currency. From this resulted (January, 
1786) a proposition from Virginia, that a convention 
from all the States should be held to regulate the 
restrictions on commerce for the whole, the commis- 
sioners to meet at Annapolis on the first Monday in 
September, 1786. The invitations to the States were 
made through the executive of Virginia, although 
Maryland had made (December, 1785) the first move 
in the matter." ^ 

The beneficent schemes of the ex-commander, in 
preparing to drain swamps and canalise rivers for 
the good of his people, may have reached the alert 
ear of Goethe, open to all contemporary impressions, 
and woven themselves with the complicated fabric of 
the second part of Fmtst. Be that as it may, the Con- 
vention soon to meet was a fixed fact, a fact more 
significant than any event which had yet occurred 
in America except the Declaration and achieve- 
ment of Independence, the one supreme fact indeed 
by which the whole business was to be signed and 
sealed. Imminent enough was the danger that if 
passions ran high enough, a great State like Vir- 
ginia, then numbering 700,000 inhabitants, might 
attack a small State like Delaware or Rhode Island 
(numbering only 70,000). North Carolina and its 

^ Baker, Washington after the Revolution, vol. ii, p. 27. 



Birth of the Constitution 40Q 

new-born child, the so-called State of " Franklin," 
were already at daggers drawn. The beautiful 
Vale of the Wyoming, celebrated in song and story, 
had already run crimson with the good blood of 
Pennsylvania and Connecticut; and New York and 
New Jersey, separated only by a streak of silver 
water, glared at each other over the chasm in a state 
of acute tariff exasperation. 

It was indeed high time to call a halt, to dissolve 
the impotent " League of Friendship " as the first 
confederation was called, recombine it into a strong 
federal power on constitutional principles, and en- 
dow it with the strength necessary to govern firmly 
a great empire, threatening at any moment to go to 
pieces for lack of centralisation. A government, 
*' one to-day, thirteen to-morrow," as one expressed 
it, could not continue on so unstable a foundation. 
Judge Marshall, the weightiest biographer of Wash- 
ington, known as the great expounder of the Con- 
stitution, quotes LaFayette's anxious words to the 
General at this time: 

" I wish," he added, " the other sentiments I have 
had occasion to discover with respect to America, were 
equally satisfactory with those that are personal to 
yourself. I need not say that the spirit, the firmness, 
with which the revolution was conducted, has excited 
universal admiration. . . . That every friend to the 
rights of mankind is an enthusiast for the principles 
on which those constitutions are built. . . . But I have 
often had the mortification to hear, that the want of 
powers in congress, of union between the States, of 



41 o George Washington 

energy in their government, would make the con- 
federation very insignificant. By their conduct in 
the revolution, the citizens of America have com- 
manded the respect of the world ; but it grieves me 
to think they will in a measure lose it, unless they 
strengthen the confederation, give congress power to 
regulate their trade, pay off their debt, or at least the 
interest of it, establish a well regulated militia, and, 
in a word, complete all those measures which you have 
recommended to them." 

" Unhappily for us," said the General in reply, 
" though the reports you mention are greatly exag- 
gerated, our conduct has laid the foundation for them. 
It is one of the evils of democratic governments, that 
the people, not always seeing, and frequently misled, 
must often feel before they act right. But evils of 
this nature seldom fail to work their own cure. It is 
to be lamented nevertheless, that the remedies are so 
slow, and that those who wish to apply them season- 
ably, are not attended to before they suffer in person, 
in interest, and in reputation. I am not without hopes 
that matters will soon take a favourable turn in the 
federal constitution. The discerning part of the com- 
munity have long since seen the necessity of giving 
adequate powers to congress for national purposes, 
and those of a different description must yield to it 
ere long." ^ 

All these dangers, growing out of what Marshall 
calls '' the miserably defective organization of the 
government," at last swept to a conclusion — the 
birth of the Republic, which Marshall in his weighty 
manner thus sketches : 

^ Marshall, The Life of George Washington, vol. v, p. yz- 



Birth of the Constitution 411 

" Measures were taken in Virginia, which, though 
they originated in different views, terminated in a 
proposition for a general convention to revise the state 
of the union. 

" To form a compact relative to the navigation of 
the rivers Potomac and Pocomoke, and of part of the 
bay of Chesapeak, by the citizens of Virginia and 
Maryland, commissioners were appointed by the leg- 
islatures of those states respectively, who assembled 
at Alexandria in March, 1785. While at Mount Ver- 
non on a visit, they agreed to propose to their res- 
pective governments, the appointment of other com- 
missioners, with power to make conjoint arrange- 
ments, to which the assent of congress was to be 
solicited, for maintaining a naval force in the Chesa- 
peak. The commissioners were also to be empowered 
to establish a tariff of duties on imports, to which the 
laws of both states should conform. When these pro- 
positions received the assent of the legislature of Vir- 
ginia, an additional resolution was passed, directing 
that which respected the duties on imports to be com- 
municated to all the states in the union, who were 
invited to send deputies to the meeting. 

" On the 2 1 St of January, 1786, a few days after 
the passage of these resolutions, another was adopted 
appointing certain commissioners, who were to meet 
such as might be appointed by the other states in the 
union, at a time and place to be agreed on, to take 
into consideration the trade of the United States; to 
examine the relative situation and trade of the said 
states ; to consider how far a uniform system in their 
commercial relations may be necessary to their com- 
mon interest, and their permanent harmony ; and to 



412 George Washing-ton 

report to the several states such an act relative to 
this great object, as when unanimously ratified by 
them, will enable the United States in congress as- 
sembled effectually to provide for the same." ^ 

The committee met and five States sent com- 
missioners, among whom was Washington from 
Virginia. Questions of such import to the whole 
country developed at the minor convention, that it 
was determined to convene a general body to revise 
the entire Federal system. The place set was Phila- 
delphia, the time, May 2, 1787. The delegates were 
to be appointed by the State legislature: 

Madison says : 

" It has been thought advisable to give this subject 
a very solemn dress, and all the weight which could 
be derived from a single state. This idea will also 
be pursued in the selection of characters to represent 
Virginia in the federal convention. You will infer 
our earnestness on this point, from the liberty which 
will be used of placing your name at the head of 
them. How far this liberty may correspond with the 
ideas by which you ought to be governed, will be best 
decided where it must ultimately be decided. In every 
event it will assist powerfully in marking the zeal of 
our legislature, and its opinion of the magnitude of 
the occasion." 

" Although," said the General in reply, " I have bid 
a public adieu to the public walks of life, and had re- 
solved never more to tread that theatre ; yet, if upon 
an occasion so interesting to the well being of the 

^ Marshall, The Life of George Washington, vol. v, p. 91. 



Birth of the Constitution 413 

confederacy, it had been the wish of the assembly 
that I should be an associate in the business of re- 
vising the federal system, I should from a sense of the 
obligation I am under for repeated proofs of confi- 
dence in me, more than from any opinion I could en- 
tertain of my usefulness, have obeyed its call ; but it 
is now out of my power to do this with any degree 
of consistency . . . the cause I will mention. 

" I presume you heard sir, that I was first ap- 
pointed, and have since been rechosen president of the 
society of the Cincinnati ; and you may have understood 
also, that the triennial general meeting of this body is 
to be held in Philadelphia the first monday in May next. 
Some particular reasons combining with the peculiar 
situation of my private concerns, the necessity of pay- 
ing attention to them, a wish for retirement and re- 
laxation from public cares, and rheumatic pains which 
I begin to feel very sensibly, induced me on the 31st 
ultimo, to address a circular letter to each state soci- 
ety, informing them of my intention not to be at the 
next meeting, and of my desire not to be rechosen 
president. The vice - president is also informed of 
this, that the business of the society may not be im- 
peded by my absence. Under these circumstances, it 
will readily be perceived that I could not appear at 
the same time and place on any other occasion, with- 
out giving offence to a very respectable and deserv- 
ing part of the community . . . the late officers of the 
American army." ^ 

Jay, Hamilton, Governor Randolph of Virginia 
besieged Washington with letters, entreating him 

^ Marshall, The Life of George Washington, vol. v, p. 98. 



414 Georg-e Washington 

to accept his unanimous election as head of the Vir- 
ginia delegation, " the last hope of the Union," says 
Marshall, " summoned by the united voice of a con- 
tinent " again to save his country. 

Washington had almost literally to be dragged 
from his retirement at Mount Vernon, put on horse- 
back — sent to Philadelphia, where as the representa- 
tive of federalism he was to play a most impressive 
part during the four and a half months' service of 
the Convention. He was himself the living incar- 
nation of the principles enunciated in his remark- 
able Circular Letter to the governors of the States, 
when he laid down his sword, strong for federal 
authority, for the observance of all debt obligations, 
foreign and domestic, for the sanctity of treaties, 
for the necessity of well-defined executive, judiciary, 
and legislative functions under republican forms of 
government. 

Many of the eminent luminaries of the law and 
of learning were already among the ninety-one 
members of the Federal Congress which had now 
continuously been in session for nearly a decade; 
but enough remained to constitute one of the most 
remarkable bodies ever assembled to discuss mat- 
ters of the last importance to the existence of a 
State. Among these were Washington (Jefferson 
was in France), Madison, Rufus King, Roger 
Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, Livingston, Frank- 
lin, Robert Morris, Mifflin, Gouverneur Morris, 
John Dickinson, Daniel Carroll, George Mason, 
Governor Randolph, Williamson (of North Car- 



Birth of the Constitution 415 

olina), Rutledge, the two Pinckneys, and Pierce 
Butler. 

By unanimous decision, Washington was escorted 
to the chair. The members were bound over to ab- 
sohite secrecy; but James Madison kept a full private 
journal of the proceedings, and this, published nearly 
fifty years after the assembling of the Convention, 
sheds intensely interesting light on the genesis of 
the original seven articles of the Constitution, as 
this Convention framed them. Other members (C. 
Pinckney, RufusKing, W.Pierce, and Robert Yates) 
kept imperfect journals of the events of the meeting, 
one of them particularly rich in pen-pictures of the 
members; but Madison's explicit work takes the 
palm for fulness and accuracy, and reveals the fu- 
ture President's profound influence in moulding the 
great but simple outlines on which the Constitution 
was built. 

Washington, as might be expected, scrupulously 
observing the injunction to secrecy, as copious as he 
usually is in his printed journals on all important 
matters pertaining to his life, lets hardly a word 
fall about the doings of the meeting. 

The extreme importance which Madison himself 
attached to his Notes may be gathered from a clause 
in his will : 

" Considering the peculiarity and magnitude of the 
occasion which produced the Convention at Phila- 
delphia in 1787, the Characters who composed it, the 
Constitution which resulted from their deliberations, 
its effects during a trial of so many years on the pros- 



41 6 Georg-e Washing-ton 

perity of the people living under it, and the interest it 
has inspired among the friends of free Government, it 
is not an unreasonable inference that a careful and 
extended report of the proceedings and discussions of 
that body, which were with closed doors, by a member 
who was constant in his attendance, will be particularly 
gratifying to the people of the United States, and to all 
who take an interest in the progress of political science 
and the course of true liberty. It is my desire that the 
Report as made by me should be published under her 
[Mrs. Madison's] authority and direction."^ 

The good old city of Philadelphia had never seen 
a more striking group of statesmen gathered in its 
broad, straight streets, and pleasant colonial man- 
sions, than during the long, hot summer of 1787. 
Every question connected with the formation of a 
representative plan of government, republican or 
monarchical, despotic or free; every question that 
human ingenuity, re-enforced by suspicion, caution, 
or the example of past ages, connected with execu- 
tive, judiciary, or legislative branches of govern- 
ment; bases of popular representation, proportional 
representation, veto power, war powers, treaty 
powers, balance of powers between the triangle of 
President, Supreme Court, and Congress; even the 
age of representatives, (twenty- five,) of senators, 
(thirty,) and of presidents, (thirty-five,) were en- 
tered into with a zest and infinity of detail which 
fixed, once and for ever, the profile outline of a vast 

^ Writings of James Madison, vol. iii, p. xi. 



Birth of the Constitution 417 

picture, afterwards to be filled out by the wisdom of 
succeeding generations, nor were currency questions 
or a National University forgotten. 

Slowly '' the federal pyramid " (as one of the 
members strikingly called it) emerged from the 
seething waters of the " Virginia Plan," the " South 
Carolina Plan," and the visionary schemes and plans 
of members who abhorred " the fetish of monarchy," 
and shrank, with Franklin, " from the natural in- 
clination which all have for kingly government " ; 
and when, at last, the 17th of September rolled 
around, the venerable philosopher, now in his 
eighty-third year, rose in his place and, through 
his friend Wilson, read a paper so full of good 
sense and picturesque humour on the compromise 
nature of all such epoch-making documents as the 
Constitution, that all signed it except two or three 
delegates, including Mason and Randolph of Vir- 
ginia. 

" Mr. President : 

*' I confess that there are several parts of this con- 
stitution which I do not at present approve, but I am 
not sure I shall never approve them : For having lived 
long, I have experienced many instances of being 
obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to 
change opinions even on important subjects, which I 
once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is 
therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am 
to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect 
to the judgment of others. Alost men indeed as well 
as most sects in Religion think themselves in pos- 



41 8 George Washing-ton 

session of all truth, and that wherever others differ 
from them it is so far error. Steele a Protestant in 
a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference 
between our Churches in their opinions of the certain- 
ty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infalli- 
ble and the Church of England is never in the wrong. 
But though many private persons think almost as 
highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, 
few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, 
who in a dispute with her sister, said ' I don't know 
how it happens. Sister, but I meet with nobody but 
myself, that is always in the right — // ny a que mot 
qui ai toiijoiirs raison' 

" In these sentiments. Sir, I agree to this Consti- 
tution with all its faults, if they are such ; because I 
think a general Government necessary for us, and 
there is no form of Government but what may be a 
blessing to the people if well administered, and beheve 
farther that this is likely to be well administered for a 
course of years, and can only end in Despotism^ as 
other forms have done before it, when the people shall 
become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, 
being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any 
other Convention we can obtain may be able to make 
a better Constitution. For when you assemble a 
number of men to have the advantage of their joint 
wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all 
their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, 
their local interests, and their selfish views. From 
such an assembly can a perfect production be ex- 
pected? It therefore astonishes me. Sir, to find this 
system approaching so near to perfection as it does ; 
and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are wait- 



Birth of the Constitution 419 

ing with confidence to hear that our councils are con- 
founded like those of the Builders of Babel ; and that 
our States are on the point of separation, only to meet 
hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's 
throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution be- 
cause I expect no better, and because I am not sure, 
that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its 
errors, I sacrifice to the pubHc good. I have never 
whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these 
walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every 
one of us in returning to our Constituents were to re- 
port the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to 
gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent 
its being generally received, and thereby lose all the 
salutary effects and great advantages resulting natu- 
rally in our favor among foreign nations as well as 
among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. 
Much of the strength and efficiency of any Govern- 
ment in procuring and securing happiness to the peo- 
ple, depends, on opinion, on the general opinion of the 
goodness of the Government as well as of the wisdom 
and integrity of its Governors. I hope therefore that 
for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the 
sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously 
in recommending this Constitution (if approved by 
Congress and confirmed by the Conventions) wher- 
ever our influence may extend, and turn our future 
thoughts and endeavors to the means of having it well 
administered. 

" On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a wish 
that every member of the Convention who may still 
have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion 
doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make mani- 



420 Georg-e Washington 

fest our unanimity, put his name to this instru- 
ment. . . ."^ 

The consent of nine States out of the thirteen was 
necessary for ratification, after the plan had ac- 
quired the consent of Congress. 

Not many months had elapsed before all the 
States, some swiftly, others with apparent reluctance, 
wheeled into line, and one after another ratified the 
work of the Convention. In Virginia, the famous 
*' fire-eater " and States' Rights man, Patrick 
Henry, fought with the fury of a lion against it for 
twenty-three days in the Virginia Convention of 
1788. and succeeded in dragging after him seventy- 
eight out of 168 delegates to that body. 

Among those on the wrong side, as after-gener- 
ations conceived it. were Patrick Henry, Benjamin 
Harrison, Judge John Tyler, Meriweather Smith. 
Stevens Thompson Mason, George Mason, Theode- 
rick Bland, Grayson, Bullitt, James ^lonroe, and 
others. 

Weighty names on the other side were Edmund 
Pendleton (president of the Convention), the Nich- 
olases, A. Stuart, Paul Carrington. Warner Lewis, 
Governor Randolph, John Marshall. X. Burwell, R. 
Breckenridge, Thornton, Powell. James ^ladison, 
John Blair, George W^-the, and Bushrod Washing- 
ton. 

Two singularly interesting entries in Washing- 
ton's Diary at this time may well close the account 
of the " momentous work " done by the Convention : 
^ Writings of James Madison, vol. iv, p. 473. 



Birth of the Constitution 421 

" Met in Convention when the Constitution received 
the unanimous assent of 1 1 States and Col. Hamilton's 
from New York (the only delegate from thence in 
Convention) and was subscribed to by every Member 
present except Gov. Randolph and Col. Mason from 
Virginia — and Mr. Gerry from Massachusetts. 

'' The business being thus closed, the Members ad- 
journed to the City Tavern, dined together and took 
a cordial leave of each other — after which I returned 
to my lodgings — did some business with, and received 
the papers from the Secretary of the Convention, and 
retired to meditate on the momentous work which had 
been executed, after not less than five, for a large part 
of the time Six, and sometimes 7 hours sitting every 
day [except], sundays and the ten days adjournment to 
give a Com.i opportunity and time to arrange the busi- 
ness for more than four Months." 

" In all our deliberations on this subject we kept 
steadily in our view, that which appears to us the 
greatest interest of every true American, the consoli- 
dation of our Union, in which is involved our pros- 
perity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence. 
This important consideration, seriously and deeply im- 
pressed on our minds, led each state in the Convention 
to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude than 
might have been otherwise expected ; and thus the 
Constitution, which we now present, is the result of a 
spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and con- 
cession which the peculiarity of our political situation 
rendered indispensable." 

Through so many throes, was the birth of the 
Republic accomplished. 

^ Committee. 



CHAPTER XX 



THE " federal pyramid " having thus been firm- 
ly established, with its broad basis built on 
popular representation, and its apex crowned by a 
man of the people's own choice, all eyes turned in- 
stinctively to the one who, in all these turmoils, had 
shown himself supremely well fitted for the position 
— to George Washington, " first citizen of the Uni- 
ted States," as a distinguished Frenchman of this 
time impressively called him. 

The tired soldier, dreaming amid the sweet re- 
tirement of Mount Vernon of a tranquil existence 
passed among his golden wheat and pink-flowering 
tobacco fields, on the banks of the beautiful Poto- 
mac, longed for nothing more than to be let alone; 
but his high sense of duty, quickened by the con- 
sciousness of a work only half done, made him, 
after a while, lend a reluctant ear to the prayers of 
Alexander Hamilton, Hanson, LaFayette, and 
others. 

" I take it for granted, Sir," wrote Hamilton, " you 
have concluded to comply with what will, no doubt, be 
the general call of your country in relation to the new 
government. You will permit me to say, that it is in- 
dispensable you should lend yourself to its first oper- 

422 



''First Citizen" 423 

ations. It is to little purpose to have introduced a 
system if the weightiest influence is not given to its 
firm establishment in the outset." 

He wrote to Samuel Hanson: 

" The first wish of my soul is to spend the evening 
of my days as a private citizen on my farm ; but, if 
circumstances, which are not yet sufficiently unfolded 
to form the judgment or the opinion of my friends, 
will not allow me this last boon of temporal happiness, 
and I should once more be led into the walks of public 
life, it is my fixed determination to enter there, not only 
unfettered by promises, but even unchargeable with 
creating or feeding the expectation of any living for 
my assistance to office." 

To LaFayette he expresses himself thus : 

'* Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and fru- 
gality are necessary to make us a great and happy peo- 
ple. Happily the present posture of affairs, and the 
prevailing disposition of my countrymen, promise to 
co-operate in establishing those four great and essential 
pillars of public felicity." 

Meanwhile, his own affairs had sorely suffered 
during his year-long absences ; he actually had to 
borrow money to put them in order; and the death 
of his Spartan mother in August, 1788, at the ripe 
age of more than four-score years, caused a further 
pang to his suffering heart. p 

" Immediately after the organisation of the present 
government, the chief magistrate repaired to Freder- 
icksburg, to pay his humble duty to his mother, pre- 






,/ 



424 Georg-e Washington 

paratory to his departure for New York. An affecting 
scene ensued. The son feehngly remarked the ravages 
which a torturing disease [cancer] had made upon the 
aged frame of the mother, and addressed her with these 
words : ' The people, madam, have been pleased, with 
the most flattering unanimity, to elect me to the chief 
magistracy of these United States, but before I can 
assume the functions of my office, I have come to bid 
you an affectionate farewell. So soon as the weight 
of public business, which must necessarily attend the 
outset of a new government, can be disposed of, I shall 
hasten to Virginia, and — ' Here the matron inter- 
rupted with ' — and you will see me no more ; my 
great age, and the disease which is fast approaching 
my vitals, warn me that I shall not be long in this 
world ; I trust in God that I may be somewhat prepared 
for a better. But go, George, fulfil the high destinies 
which Heaven appears to have intended you for ; go, 
my son, and may that Heaven's and a mother's blessing 
be with you always.' " ^ 

In such leisurely fashion did the delegates as- 
semble that March 4 became April 6, 1789, before 
the Congress, opening the electoral votes, found 
that every one of the sixty-nine ballots cast by the 
ten voting states (New York, North Carolina, and 
Rhode Island not voting) was cast for the great 
Virginian. John Adams received thirty-four votes 
and was installed as Vice-president. 

Washington's ov^n feelings are better imagined 

* G. W. P. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of 
Washington, p. 145. 



n 



First Citizen" 425 



than described. He wrote to General Knox after 
his election : 

" In confidence I tell you, (with the world it would 
obtain little credit) that my movements to the chair of 
government will be accompanied by feelings not un- 
like those of a culprit, who is going to the place of his 
execution ; so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life 
nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful 
abode for an ocean of difficulties, without that com- 
petency of political skill, abilities, and inclination, 
which are necessary to manage the helm. I am sensi- 
ble that I am embarking the voice of the people, and a 
good name of my own, on this voyage ; but what re- 
turns will be made for them. Heaven alone can foretell. 
Integrity and firmness are all I can promise." 

To his French friend, Hector St. John de Cre- 
veccEur, he wrote : 

" A combination of circumstances and events seems 
to have rendered my embarking again on the ocean of 
public affairs inevitable. How opposite this is to my 
own desires and inclinations, I need not say. Those 
who know me are, I trust, convinced of it. For the 
rectitude of my intentions I appeal to the great 
Searcher of hearts ; and if I have any knowledge of 
myself I can declare, that no prospects however flatter- 
ing, no personal advantage however great, no desire 
of fame however easily it might be acquired, could in- 
duce me to quit the private walks of life at my age and 
in my situation ; but if, by any exertion or services of 
mine, my country can be benefited, I shall feel more 
amply compensated for the sacrifices which I make, 
than I possibly can be by any other means." 



426 George Washing-ton 

In the spirit of true magnanimity, he laid aside 
all personal concerns, and accepted the high trust 
conferred on him by nearly four millions of people. 
His Diary gives a pathetic glimpse of his feelings : 

"April 15th. 
" About ten o'clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, 
to private life, and to domestic felicity, and with a 
mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensa- 
tions than I have words to express, set out for New 
York in company with Mr. Thomson and Col. Hum- 
phreys, with the best disposition to render service to my 
country in obedience to its calls, but with less hope of 
answering its expectations." 

No gay cavalier was this, prancing on restive 
steed to meet unknown responsibilities in far-distant 
New York, that April morning : it was a very 
solemn horseman, about whose neck was a chain, 
a chain of gold, woven of the thousand threads of 
a nation's gratitude, but still a chain. Very differ- 
ent, indeed, was this ride from that five years be- 
fore, when he set out from Annapolis to spend the 
Christmas of 1783 at Mount Vernon. The symbolic 
April weather with all its changefulness was upon 
him, and he was hastening onward toward unknown 
and perhaps insurmountable difficulties. 

The 30th of April drew nigh, and on that day in 
the good year 1789, *' the first Magistrate of the 
Union " was inaugurated, as the expression came 
to be. President of the United States. 

The simple ceremony was thus described by a 
contemporary : 



** First Citizen'* 427 

" At nine o'clock A. M. the clergy of different 
denominations assembled their congregations in their 
respective places of worship, and offered up prayers 
for the safety of the President. 

*' About twelve o'clock the procession moved from 
the house of the president in Cherry Street, through 
Dock Street to Federal Hall [at Wall and Nassau 
Streets] : in the following order. Colonel [Morgan] 
Lewis supported by two officers, Capt. Stakes, with 
the troop of Horse-Artillery, Major Van Home, Gren- 
adiers, under Captain Harsin, German Grenadiers, 
under Capt. Scriba, Major Bicker, The Infantry of 
the Brigade, Major Chrystie, Sheriff [Robert Boyd], 
The Committee of the Senate, The President and suite. 
The Committee of the Representatives, The Honorable 
Mr. Jay, General Knox, Chancellor Livingston, and 
several other gentlemen of distinction. Then followed 
a multitude of citizens. 

" When they came within a short distance of the 
Hall, the troops formed a line on both sides of the way, 
and his Excellency passing through the ranks, was 
conducted into the building, and in the Senate Chamber 
introduced to both houses of Congress — immediately 
afterwards, accompanied by the two houses, he went 
into the gallery fronting Broad-Street, where, in the 
presence of an immense concourse of citizens, he took 
the oath prescribed by the constitution, which was 
administered to him by the Hon. R. R. Livingston, 
Esq., Chancellor of the state of New York. 

" Immediately after he had taken the oath, the Chan- 
cellor proclaimed him President of the United States. 
— Was answered by the discharge of 13 guns, and 
by loud repeated shouts ; on this the President bowed 



428 Georg^e Washing-ton 

to the people, and the air again rang with their accla- 
mations. His Excellency with the two houses, then 
retired to the Senate Chamber and delivered his speech. 
" His excellency accompanied by the Vice-President, 
the Speaker of the House of Representatives [Fred- 
erick A. Muhlenberg] and both Houses of Congress 
went to St. Paul's chapel [Broadway and Vesey Street] 
where divine Service was performed by Right Rever- 
end Dr. [Samuel] Provost, Bishop of the Episcopal 
Church in this State and Chaplain in Congress. The 
religious ceremony being ended, the President was 
escorted to his house, and the citizens retired to their 
homes. In the evening was exhibited under the direc- 
tion of Colonel Bauman, a very ingenious and splendid 
show of Fireworks." 

Washington gathered about him his tried and 
trusty friends, and formed them into a Cabinet 
which should guide him at this critical stage : 
Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, Jay (suc- 
ceeded a few months later by Jefferson), Secretary 
of State, Knox, Secretary of War, Edmund Ran- 
dolph (not so good a friend!), Attorney-General, 
and Samuel Osgood, Postmaster-General. 

Always a trifle ceremonious, after the good old 
fashion of the true Virginia gentleman of the 
eighteenth century, the President found it neces- 
sary to establish certain little rules of observance 
and of etiquette, which should save him from the 
intolerable bores who thronged his ante-chamber 
and called " just to pay their respects." Hours for 
public receptions, hours for Mrs. Washington's 





WASHINGTON MONUMENT. 
Looking across the " Flats." 



''First Citizen" 429 

levees, hours for the diplomats, state dinners, an 
established code for the President of receiving, but 
not returning, calls, the simplest ceremonial dress 
of the eighteenth century, and a certain stately 
simplicity of behaviour, characterised the begin- 
nings of official life in the United States, as far 
as possible removed from the vice-regal splendour 
of the Spanish Courts in Mexico, the Antilles, and 
South America. 

The soldier period of Washington's existence had 
passed away for ever, and he was now, at the age 
of fifty-seven, about to enter on that career of the 
statesman which has roused and held the lasting ad- 
miration of the world. Each period occupied eight 
years, and it would be difficult to give the palm to 
either for sustained and powerful evolution and 
growth. The natural born statesman with un- 
erring instinct saw and seized the right measures 
for the infant State, recognised infallibly what was 
the right thing to do, and did it with an inflexibility 
which no flattery or persuasion could swerve from 
its purpose. Two measures, to his undying praise 
be it said, stand out big and luminous beyond all 
others, noble monuments to his wisdom and fore- 
sight: the establishment, as a fixed policy, of the 
absolute neutrality of the United States in all Eu- 
ropean entanglements, and the intellectual and moral 
alliance with Great Britain. The dear old mother- 
country had erred grievously in her behaviour to- 
wards her child, but Washington, forgiving but not 
forgetting, could not bring himself to break with her, 



430 Georg-e Washington 

eminent as were the claims of France to his grati- 
tude, when the French War came on in the nineties. 
He loved England too much to set himself against 
her, and this exceeding affection at last put Britain 
— reversing Scripture — into the position of the pro- 
digal mother who, having spent her immeasurable 
wealth of colonies in riotous living, came to fall at 
the feet of her child and ask its pardon. 

These eight years of administration were of su- 
preme importance to the Republic as " solidifiers," 
as pattern years wherein broad foundations for future 
policies were laid, as years of precedent fraught 
with interest for the administrations to come. The 
era of *' sovereign " States and suppliant congresses, 
of '' leagues of friendship," beguiled almost into 
dissolution by contempt of a central power and by 
presumptuous self-confidence, was temporarily over 
and the country was to rest for at least seventy years 
before the phantom of disintegration, trampling 
under foot Washington's prayer for an " inviolable " 
and " indissoluble " Union, was to stalk abroad 
through the land. 

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in No- 
vember, 1789; the first census was carried out in 
1790. Very simple was the ceremonial at Wash- 
ington's receptions, as thus described by a con- 
temporary : 

" At three o'clock, or at any time within a quarter 
of an hour afterward, the visitor was conducted to the 
dining-room, from which all seats had been removed 
for the time. On entering, he saw the tall manly figure 



'' First Citizen" 431 

of Washington clad in black velvet; his hair in full 
dress, powdered and gathered behind in a large silk 
bag ; yellow gloves on his hands ; holding a cocked hat 
with a cockade in it, and the edges adorned with a 
black feather about an inch deep. He wore knee and 
shoe buckles ; and a long sword, with a finely wrought 
and polished steel hilt, which appeared at the left hip ; 
the coat worn over the sword, so that the hilt, and the 
part below the coat behind, were in view. The scab- 
bard was white polished leather. He stood always in 
front of the fire-place, with his face towards the door 
of entrance. The visitor was conducted to him, and he 
required to have the name so distinctly pronounced that 
he could hear it. He had the very uncommon faculty 
of associating a man's name, and personal appearance, 
so durably in his memory, as to be able to call one by 
name, who made him a second visit. He received his 
visitor with a dignified bow, while his hands were so 
disposed of as to indicate, that the salutation was not 
to be accompanied with shaking hands. This cere- 
mony never occurred in these visits, even with his most 
near friends, that no distinction might be made. 

'' As visitors came in, they formed a circle around 
the room. At a quarter past three, the door was closed, 
and the circle was formed for that day. He then began 
on the right, and spoke to each visitor, calling him by 
name, and exchanging a few words with him. When 
he had completed his circuit, he resumed his first posi- 
tion, and the visitors approached him in succession, 
bowed and retired. By four o'clock this ceremony was 
over." ^ 

' William Sullivan, Public Men of the Revolution, p. 120. 



432 Georg-e Washing-ton 

The next Congress met at Philadelphia, which 
was to remain the Capital until 1800, when Congress 
met in the " Federal City " on the banks of the 
Potomac; this city was planned and laid out by the 
President, Major L'Enfant, Ellicott, and others, 
Washington himself laying the corner-stone of the 
Capitol with Masonic ceremonies. This district, ten 
miles square, has ever since been known as " The 
District of Columbia " and is the seat of the Federal 
Government. 

Though possessing a constitution of iron, the 
President was twice very near death during the early 
years of his first administration, once from a malig- 
nant tumor, during which he lay for six weeks on 
his right side unable to sit up; the other time from 
inflammation of the lungs and debility. 

During the former illness he watched the doctor 
closely, and uttered with placid firmness the simple 
touching words : " Do not flatter me with vain 
hopes; I am not afraid to die, and therefore 
can bear the worst. Whether to-night or twenty 
years hence makes no difference. I know that I am 
in the hands of a good Providence." 

He instituted the custom of " touring the coun- 
try " in the interests of good administration, be- 
ginning with New England, and continuing, later, 
with the Southern States, everywhere meeting an 
enthusiastic welcome. 

At Boston occurred a ludicrous incident which 
dispelled for ever, so far as Washington was con- 
cerned, the delusion of '' Sovereign " States, and 



n 



First Citizen'* 433 



casts a gleam of grim humour over the serious coun- 
tenance of the President. When he visited that city, 
the President was informed that John Hancock, 
Governor of Massachusetts, was sick in bed, too ill 
to pay his visit of ceremony. It was more than 
suspected that this was a mere " dodge," to evade 
the responsibilities of the hour and the recognition 
of the President as the superior of the Governor of 
a State. Washington declined to visit the " indis- 
posed " magistrate, who thereupon, in post-haste, 
had himself " borne in a litter, swathed in flannels " 
to the inflexible Chief, paid his respects, and then 
departed, doubtless meditating over the vicissitudes 
of fortune. 

From over the water, from time to time, came 
strange visitors and stranger relics : the great key of 
the Bastille (destroyed in 1789), presented by La- 
Fayette; a fiery ode from the pen of Alfieri; sculp- 
tors and painters commemorating in marble or pig- 
ment their conception of the General. Peale, Trum- 
bull, Houdon, Canova, Gilbert Stuart, caught the 
features and fixed the attitudes in which posterity 
now loves to study the outward character of the 
President. Chateaubriand and Charles James Fox 
uttered memorable words about him : 

" The conversation turned almost entirely on the 
French revolution. The general showed us a key of 
the Bastille; those keys of the Bastille were but silly 
playthings which were about that time distributed over 
the two worlds. Had Washington seen like me the 
conquerors of the Bastille in the kennels of Paris, he 



434 George Washington 

would have had less faith in the relic. The gravity and 
the energy of the revolution were not in those sangui- 
nary orgies. At the time of the revocation of the edict 
of Nantes, in 1685, the same populace of the Faubourg 
Saint-Antoine demolished the Protestant church at 
Charenton with as much zeal as it despoiled the church 
of St. Denis in 1793. 

" I left my host at ten in the evening, and never saw 
him again : he set out for the country the following day, 
and I continued my journey. 

" Such was my interview with that man who gave 
liberty to a whole world. Washington sank into the 
tomb before any little celebrity had attached to my 
name. I passed before him as the most unknown of 
beings ; he was in all his glory, I in the depth of my 
obscurity, my name probably dwelt not a whole day in 
his memory. Happy, however, that his looks were cast 
upon me ! I have felt myself warmed for it all the rest 
of my life. There is a virtue in the looks of a great 
man." ^ 

Mr. Fox in the British Parliament in January, 
1794, said : 

** And here. Sir, I cannot help alluding to the Presi- 
dent of the United States, General Washington, a 
character whose conduct has been so different from 
that which has been pursued by the ministers of this 
country. How infinitely wiser must appear the spirit 
and principles manifested in his late address to Con- 
gress than the policy of modern European courts ! Il- 
lustrious man, deriving honour less from the splendour 
of his situation than from the dignity of his mind ; be- 

^ Chateaubriand, Travels in America and Italy. 



*' First Citizen" 435 

fore whom all borrowed greatness sinks into insig- 
nificance, and all the potentates of Europe (excepting 
the members of our own royal family) become little 
and contemptible! He has had no occasion to have 
recourse to any tricks of policy or arts of alarm ; his 
authority has been sufficiently supported by the same 
means by which it was acquired, and his conduct has 
uniformly been characterised by wisdom, moderation, 
and firmness. Feeling gratitude to France for the 
assistance received from her in that great contest, which 
secured the independence of America, he did not 
choose to give up the system of neutrality. Having 
once laid down that line of conduct, which both grati- 
tude and policy pointed out as most proper to be pur- 
sued, not all the insults and provocation of the French 
minister Genet could turn him from his purpose. In^ 
trusted with the welfare of a great people, he did not 
allow the misconduct of another, with respect to him- 
self, for one moment to withdraw his attention from 
their interest. He had no fear of the Jacobins, he felt 
no alarm from their principles, and considered no pre- 
caution as necessary in order to stop their progress." 

The intellectual elite of the country were gathered 
about the central figure in the two Houses of Con- 
gress, the Supreme Court of the United States 
(over which Jay presided for a while), and the 
Cabinet. Aided by the energetic counsel of Hamil- 
ton and the milder wisdom of Madison, Washing- 
ton established on firm lines the fiscal policy of the 
country, persuaded a doubting Congress to assume 
the war debts of the States, with huge outcry of the 
■' States' Rights " party, w^ho were too fastidious 



436 George Washing-ton 

either to pay their own debts or have them paid by 
the National Government, and when the Whiskey 
Rebellion broke out, in 1794, in Western Pennsyl- 
vania over the new excise laws, was ready to spring 
into the saddle and assume the command himself 
of the forces quickly raised to crush it. 

Chronic grumblers of course there were, like 
Maclay of Pennsylvania, who hurled surreptitious 
vitriol at the President for going in state to Con- 
gress with postilions, and outriders, and other 
'' monarchical " gear, or like Freneau, whose in- 
famous attacks on his character and motives, later, 
caused Washington great pain; but, generally, the 
period 1789- 1797 came to be looked upon as the 
Golden Age of the Republic, an age presided over 
by the man whose portrait Lord Shelburne con- 
sidered the first ornament of his gallery ; a man to 
whom the famous Thomas, Lord Erskine wrote : 

" I have taken the liberty to introduce your august 
and immortal name in a short sentence which is to be 
found in the book I send to you. I have a large ac- 
quaintance among the most valuable and exalted 
classes of men ; but you are the only human being for 
whom I ever felt an awful reverence. I sincerely pray 
God to grant a long and serene evening to a life so 
gloriously devoted to the universal happiness of the 
world." 

When even his foes could speak of him thus, there 
was no fear that '' the first magistrate of the Union " 
would wilfully go astray on questions vital to hu- 
manity as well as to his own people. 



'' First Citizen '* 437 

His policy toward the Indians, the wild Chero- 
kees and Chickasaws, as well as to the more civilised 
Six Nations, shadowed as it might be by the awful 
disaster of General St. Clair, and the continued re- 
fusal of the British Ministry to deliver up the North- 
western fortresses, as stipulated by the Treaty of 
Paris, was always distinguished by the same calm- 
ness, patience, concihation as he showed toward the 
civilised white potentates who sent stars and garters, 
instead of pipes of peace and strings of wampum, 
to symbolise their good feeling. The '' Great 
Father " would gravely whiff the proffered calumet 
and pass it on to the painted and top-knotted savage, 
as ceremoniously as to a Spanish grandee, collared 
with the insignia of the Golden Fleece; and great 
would be the satisfaction, and numerous the gut- 
tural grunts as the diplomats of the wilderness 
swept, breeched and blanketed, out of his presence. 

And thus the Indian " wild-fire," that ran over 
prairie and mountain, scourged the Alleghanies and 
the Ohio Valley, and threatened at times the very 
existence of the Republic, grew gradually fainter, 
less intense, less malignant, conjured by kind words, 
just treatment, courtesy, and conciliation. 

As the first administration drew to its close, men 
began to look anxiously into each other's faces and 
inquire : What shall we do now ? What is to be- 
come of us if . ... ? 

This " if," fraught with such enormous meaning, 
could signify but one thing. The great builder of 
the Republic was still there; the foundations were 



438 Georg-e Washington 

settling, but consolidation was not yet complete ; the 
French Revolution had started alarming agitations ; 
it appeared as if the fair fabric of American Union, 
reared amid such difficulties, planned with such 
wisdom, might collapse if the superintending archi- 
tect deserted the structure at this critical moment, 
or let it settle not in cement of adamant but in 
quicksands of party strife. 

Three or four powerful voices concentrated the 
sentiment of the entire country, when Hamilton, 
Jefferson, and Randolph wrote : 

" I received the most sincere pleasure," said Hamil- 
ton, " at finding in our last conversation, that there was 
some relaxation in the disposition you had before dis- 
covered to decline a reelection. Since your departure 
I have lost no opportunity of sounding the opinions of 
persons, whose opinions were worth knowing, on these 
two points ; first, the effect of your declining upon the 
public affairs, and upon your own reputation ; second- 
ly, the effect of your continuing, in reference to the 
declarations you have made of your disinclination to 
public life. And I can truly say, that I have not found 
the least difference of sentiment on either point. The 
impression is uniform, that your declining would be to 
be deplored as the greatest evil that could befall the 
country at the present juncture, and as critically hazard- 
ous to your own reputation ; that your continuance will 
be justified in the mind of every friend to his country 
by the evident necessity for it. . . . I trust, Sir, and 
I pray God, that you will determine to make a further 
sacrifice of your tranquility and happiness to the public 
good. I trust, that it need not continue above a year 



'' First Citizen" 439 

or two more. And I think, that it will be more eligible 
to retire from office before the expiration of the term 
of election, than to decline a reelection." 

" The confidence of the whole Union," said Jeffer- 
son, " is centred in you. Your being at the helm will 
be more than an answer to every argument which can 
be used to alarm and lead the people in any quarter 
into violence or secession. North and south will hang 
together, if they have you to hang on ; and, if the first 
corrective of a numerous representation should fail in 
its effect, your presence will give time for trying others 
not inconsistent with the union and peace of the States." 

Randolph wrote : 

" Permit me, then, in the fervor of a dutiful and 
affectionate attachment to you, to beseech you to 
penetrate the consequences of a dereliction of the reins. 
The constitution would never have been adopted, but 
from a knowledge that you had once sanctioned it, and 
an expectation that you would execute it. It is in a 
state of probation. The most inauspicious struggles 
are past, but the public deliberations need stability. 
You alone can give them stability. You suffered your- 
self to yield when the voice of your country summoned 
you to the administration. Should a civil war arise, 
you cannot stay at home. And how much easier will 
it be to disperse the factions, which are rushing to this 
catastrophe, than to subdue them after they shall appear 
in arms ? It is the fixed opinion of the world, that you 
surrender nothing incomplete." 

Jefferson " hit the nail precisely on the head " 
when he summed up the whole situation in a single 
phrase : '' North and south will hang together if 



440 Georg^e Washing-ton 

they have you to hang on." Washington was the 
central pivot of the whole machine ; and modest and 
diffident as he was, with his private affairs at Mount 
Vernon all entangled, and his nephew dying there, 
he could not but feel it to be true. Giving up for 
the hundredth time all personal considerations, he 
yielded, sacrificing himself with that touching and 
sublime trust in a superintending Providence which 
he had all his life practised, as he wrote to Ran- 
dolph : 

" With respect, however, to the interesting subject 
treated in your letter of the 5th instant, I can express 
but one sentiment at this time, and that is a wish, a 
devout one, that, whatever my ultimate determination 
shall be, it may be for the best. The subject never 
recurs to my mind but with additional poignancy ; and, 
from the declining state of the health of my nephew, 
to whom my concerns of a domestic and private nature 
are entrusted, it comes with aggravated force. But as 
the All-wise Disposer of events has hitherto watched 
over my steps, I trust, that, in the important one I may 
soon be called upon to take, he will mark the course 
so plainly, as that I cannot mistake the way." 

Again the solemn moment of the election drew 
nigh : the ballots were again opened, and again the 
entire number was given to Washington — triumph 
more signal than before, for now New York, North 
Carolina, and Rhode Island voted, and Kentucky 
and Vermont had entered the Union, making fifteen 
instead of ten States now voting. John Adams, 
staunch Federalist, brilliant politician, perhaps the 



*' First Citizen" 441 

most generally accomplished of the occupants of the 
White House, except Jefferson, was still the favour- 
ite for Vice-president. Universal pleasure was dis- 
played at this event. Both Houses waited in state 
on the President, as they had often done before to 
offer their congratulations on his birthday. He 
took the simple oath of office, kissed the Bible, and 
was now in for another four years, far more diffi- 
cult and perplexing than the first, testing his endur- 
ance to the utmost, yet accentuating more and more 
his perpetual purpose to leave behind him a nation 
and a government established upon the firmest 
foundations. The new administration opened under 
bright auspices. 

The wild orgies in France, however, the cruel 
execution of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, the 
insane activity of the Jacobins, soon produced ex- 
treme tension between France and England, and war 
was declared in 1794. 

The '' burning question " of the neutrality of the 
United States burned to a white heat, ere it cooled 
under the icy touch of the President, whose states- 
manship loomed up in outlines as clear and unmis- 
takable as the Alps. '' No entangling alliances," 
cried he to the crazy fanatics who itched to embroil 
the country in a war with England by a noisy 
alliance with the French. Profoundly sympathising 
with both sides, devotedly attached to France and 
the LaFayettes, while every fibre of his nature and 
ancestry struck straight and deep into the heart of 
England, he managed to keep his head, and declare 



442 George Washington 

in lucid and positive terms his firm purpose to side 
with neither. Parties for the first time appeared in 
Congress, and bitter and trenchant talk was tossed 
to and fro; jibes, jokes, doggered, pasquinades, and 
pamphlets of all sorts, jocose or ferocious, lent pic- 
turesqueness to the scene; and the misguided diplo- 
mats of Downing Street again went so far as to 
bring their country to the verge of war with the 
United States, by still refusing to surrender the 
frontier strongholds. Jay was sent to England to 
negotiate a treaty, which was arranged in 1795; but 
when it came before Congress, in 1796, for ratifica- 
tion, an acrimonious debate arose over its terms, 
which seemed to concede far too much to England 
in return for the surrender of the fortresses. Riots 
ensued ; windows were smashed ; violent scenes were 
enacted on the streets, worse than those which a 
year or two before had accompanied the conduct of 
the meddling French minister, Genet, as he pro- 
ceeded to dispense letters of marque to French 
privateers, and organise open resistance to England 
on American soil. The Secretary of State, Edmund 
Randolph, sympathised with France, and was ac- 
cused of receiving bribes from the French Cabinet. 
Fluctuations in the Cabinet ensued from time to 
time; Hamilton, Jefferson, Knox, and Randolph re- 
tired, and Wolcott, Pickering, and Charles Lee of 
Virginia took service as Secretaries of the Treasury 
and of State, and Attorney-general. Germs of 
an enlightened policy towards army and navy began 
to develop, and a liberal treaty with Spain soon 



*' First Citizen " 443 

brought the country into active intercourse with 
Florida and the Spanish-speaking Americas. 

All, however, was not serene sailing for the Presi- 
dent. " Noth withstanding," says Chief Justice 
Marshall, " the extraordinary popularity of the first 
president of the United States, scarcely has any 
important act of his administration escaped the most 
bitter invective." 

Party feeling indeed ran high at times, especially 
on the neutrality question, and " the calm light of 
mild philosophy," as Washington phrased it, came 
near deserting him. 

Of the bitterness of this party feeling Washing- 
ton's own words give ample testimony : 

" To this I may add, and very truly, that until the 
last year or two, I had no conception that parties would, 
or even could go the lengths I have been witness to; 
nor did I believe, until lately, that it was within the 
bounds of probability . . . hardly within those of 
possibility . . . that while I was using my utmost ex- 
ertions to establish a national character of our own, 
independent as far as our obligations and justice would 
permit, of every nation of the earth ; and wished by 
steering a steady course to preserve this country from 
the horrors of a desolating war, I should be accused 
of being the enemy of one nation and subject to the 
influence of another ; and to prove it, that every act of 
my administration would be tortured, and the grossest 
and most insidious misrepresentations of them be made, 
by giving one side only of a subject, and that too in 
such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely 



444 George Washington 

be applied to a Nero, ... to a notorious defaulter, 
... or even to a common pick-pocket." ^ 

A batch of spurious letters, seriously reflecting 
on his character, had appeared twenty years before 
and caused the President such pain and indignation 
that he filed a solemn and explicit denial of their 
authenticity with the Secretary of State, before he 
laid down his office in 1797. These letters, known 
as " The Spurious Washington Letters," he de- 
nounced as " a base forgery." 

When the closing years of his second administra- 
tion were drawing on, he conceived the happy idea 
of bequeathing to his beloved people a legacy of 
thought and counsel, such as his forty-five years of 
devotion to this service had suggested to his fervent 
and active mind, thought and counsel the most pre- 
cious ever bequeathed by a great leader to his people 
about to be left to their own thoughts and counsels. 
Of this noble document the eminent English his- 
torian, Alison, writes : 

** The end of the same year [1796] witnessed the 
resignation of the presidency of the United States of 
America by General Washington, and his voluntary 
retirement into private life. Modern history has not 
a more spotless character to commemorate. Invincible 
in resolution, firm in conduct, incorruptible in integrity, 
he brought to the helm of a victorious republic the 
simplicity and innocence of rural life ; he was forced 
into greatness by circumstances rather than led into 
it by inclination, and prevailed over his enemies rather 

* Marshall, The Life of George Washington, vol. v, p. 675. 



n 



First Citizen'* 445 



by the wisdom of his designs, and the perseverance of 
his character, than by any extraordinary genius for the 
art of war. A soldier from necessity and patriotism 
rather than disposition, he was first to recommend a 
return to pacific counsels when the independence of 
his country was secured ; and bequeathed to his country- 
men an address on leaving their government to which 
there are few compositions of inspired wisdom which 
can bear a comparison. He was modest without diffi- 
dence ; sensible to the voice of fame without vanity ; 
independent and dignified without either asperity or 
pride. He was a friend to liberty, but not to licentious- 
ness — not to the dreams of enthusiasts, but to those 
practical ideas which America had inherited from her 
British descent, and which were opposed to nothing so 
much as the extravagant love of power in the French 
democracy. Accordingly, after having signalised his 
life by a successful resistance to English oppression, 
he closed it by the warmest advice to cultivate the 
friendship of Great Britain ; and exerted his whole in- 
fluence, shortly before his resignation, to effect the 
conclusion of a treaty of friendly and commercial in- 
tercourse between the mother country and its emanci- 
pated offspring. He was a Cromwell without his am- 
bition ; a Sylla without his crimes ; and after having 
raised his country, by his exertions, to the rank of an 
independent state, he closed his career by a voluntary 
relinquishment of the power which a grateful people 
had bestowed." 

Many willing hands besides Washington's 
wrought on this paper — Hamilton, Madison, Pick- 
ering, made many suggestions, turned many 
phrases, communicated thoughts and ideas to be 



446 Georg-e Washington 

woven into its substance ; but the spirit of Washing- 
ton is there supreme, lofty, cahn, a superintending 
Providence incarnate, providing for the future and 
guarding against its perils with truest insight. 

Never was the last will and testament of a great 
mind more touchingly embodied in words, noble in 
their simplicity, direct in their force, pregnant in 
their significance; and, for more than a hundred 
years, the country has followed its counsels with 
reverence and respect. 

When his successor, John Adams, was sworn in 
on March 4, 1797, it was noticed that a radiant joy 
and peace settled on the face of Washington, an 
expression which never afterwards deserted it. 
When the French scare was at its height, and French 
cruisers began to ravage American trade in the West 
Indies, he was as ready as ever to hurry forward and 
help his country as Commander-in-chief of her 
forces, though he was an old and broken man seek- 
ing naught but rest. 

The best summary of his administrative work is 
found in the words of Marshall : 

" At home, a sound credit had been created ; an im- 
mense floating debt had been funded in a manner per- 
fectly satisfactory to the creditors ; an ample revenue 
had been provided ; those difficulties which a system 
of internal taxation, on its first introduction, is doomed 
to encounter, were completely removed ; and the au- 
thority of the government was firmly established. 
Funds for the gradual payment of the debt had been 
provided ; a considerable part of it had been actually 



** First Citizen '* 447 

discharged ; and that system which is now operating its 
entire extinction, had been matured and adopted. The 
agricultural and commercial wealth of the nation had 
increased beyond all former example. The numerous 
tribes of warlike Indians, inhabiting those immense 
tracts which lie between the then cultivated country 
and the Mississippi, had been taught, by arms and by 
justice, to respect the United States, and to continue 
in peace. This desirable object having been accom- 
plished, that humane system was established for civil- 
ising and furnishing them with the conveniences of 
life, which improves their condition, while it secures 
their attachment. 

" Abroad, the differences with Spain had been ac- 
commodated ; and the free navigation of the Mississippi 
had been acquired, with the use of New Orleans as a 
depot for three years, and afterwards until some other 
equivalent place should be designated. Those causes 
of mutual exasperation which had threatened to involve 
the United States in a war with the greatest maritime 
and commercial power in the world, had been removed ; 
and the military posts which had been occupied within 
their territory, from their existence as a nation, had 
been evacuated. Treaties had been formed with Al- 
giers and with Tripoli, and no captures appear to have 
been made by Tunis ; so that the Mediterranean was 
opened to American vessels. 

" This bright prospect was indeed, in part, shaded by 
the glowing discontents of France. Those who have 
attended to the particular points of difference between 
the two nations will assign the causes to which these 
discontents are to be ascribed; and will judge whether 
it was in the power of the executive to have avoided 



448 Georg-e Washington 

them, without surrendering the real independence of 
the nation, and the most invaluable of all rights . . . the 
right of self-government." ^ 

Of the final act of this great administration — the 
surrender of the reins of government into the hands 
of his successor — John Adams wrote: 

" There was scarcely a dry eye except Washing- 
ton's." 

^ Marshall, The Life of George Washington, vol. v, p. 732. 



CHAPTER XXI 

"the glimmering taper" 

^^/'^ RANDPAPA is much pleased with being 
vJ- once more Farmer Washington," wrote 
NelHe Custis to Mrs. Wolcott, in 1797. For sixteen 
years, Washington had been separated from his be- 
loved Mount Vernon, eight of those passed in the 
harassing anxieties of camps, and eight more, far 
from the green wildernesses of his youth, amid the 
brick and mortar of New York and Philadelphia. 
The evening hour, the hour of the contemplative 
lamp, dedicated to the loving family circle, was ap- 
proaching. The home called him with irresistible 
eloquence. For nearly fifty years he had been a 
public man, absolutely devoted, body and soul, to 
the service of his country; yet all the time the in- 
tense domestic instincts had been there, chained 
down by his solemn sense of public responsibilities, 
ready at a moment's notice to break loose when the 
pressure was removed. The pruning-hook and the 
ploughshare triumphantly vindicated their strength 
over the sword, and Washington now turned to 
them as his proper implements and insignia. 

Of his occupations at Mount Vernon he pleasantly 
writes to McHenry : 

" I begin my diurnal course with the sun ; if my hire- 
449 



450 George Washing-ton 

lings are not in their places at that time I send them 
messages of sorrow for their indisposition ; having put 
these wheels in motion, I examine the state of things 
further ; the more they are probed, the deeper I find the 
wounds, which my buildings have sustained by an 
absence and neglect of eight years ; by the time I have 
accomplished these matters, breakfast (a little after 
seven o'clock) is ready; this being over, I mount my 
horse and ride round my farms, which employs me 
until it is time to dress for dinner, at which I rarely 
miss seeing strange faces, come as they say out of re- 
spect for me. Pray, would not the word curiosity 
answer as well? And how different this from having 
a few social friends at a cheerful board ! The usual 
time of sitting at table, a walk, and tea, bring me 
within the dawn of candlelight ; previous to which, if 
not prevented by company, I resolve, that, as soon as 
the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great 
luminary, I will retire to my writing-table and acknowl- 
edge the letters I have received ; but when the lights 
are brought, I feel tired and disinclined to engage in 
this work, conceiving that the next night will do as 
well. The next night comes, and with it the same 
causes for postponement, and so on ... . Having given 
you the history of a day, it will serve for a year." 

He was already in the attitude of the parting 
guest making preparations for the hour of his de- 
parture. The luminary, which Franklin had sig- 
nificantly pointed to when Washington presided 
over the Constitutional Convention, had climbed to 
the meridian and was now gently and softly shroud- 
ing itself in the lovely mists of twilight, " a glim- 



*'The Glimmering- Taper" 451 

mering taper " emitting only the calm and solemn 
light that shines more and more unto the perfect 
day. But there was nothing mawkish or sentimental 
in the last days at Mount Vernon. With the per- 
fect strength of mind and of physique that had 
always characterised him, he viewed life with cheer- 
fulness, retired at nine, rose at four, attended 
personally to the loads of letters that daily littered 
his table, went forth, compass in hand, to survey 
this or that piece of ground, personally superin- 
tended the copying of his private and public corre- 
spondence, looked carefully after his hundreds of 
dependents, and, in true Old Virginia style, kept 
open house for the throngs of pilgrims who made 
Mount Vernon the Mecca of the eighteenth century. 
Hither came the mocking Talleyrand, the philo- 
sophic Volney, the exiled Louis Philippe and his 
brothers, visitors from every clime and kingdom, 
writers, artists, veterans of the Revolution, members 
of cabinets and congresses, gentle and simple alike; 
all were hospitably welcomed. The General's fa- 
vourite expressions about this idyllic existence were : 
" my own vine and fig-tree," " the shades of retire- 
ment," " floating gently down the stream of time." 
A great peace had come upon him, and the evening 
glow was melting into that mellow twilight that 
sometimes wells up behind a great mountain, and 
makes it loom in golden distinctness against the 
illumined West. His comprehensive care neglected 
neither jot nor tittle, neither tomb nor testament: 
everything was thought of. He rode from twelve to 



452 Georg-e Washington 

fifteen miles over his estates every day; seed-time 
and harvest came and went, every phase of each be- 
ing followed by his vigilant eye. He gathered his 
old servants affectionately about him and established 
them in comfortable quarters : " Old Billy," his 
body servant during the Revolution, now a cripple, 
Jack the fisherman, watching on the river for the 
cook's signal to bring the fish for dinner ; and many 
another ancient and faithful dependent. A humor- 
ous gleam is again shed over this period, by an 
amusing contract drawn up by the ex-president with 
his gardener, whose besetting sin was a fondness 
for the convivial cup. Among other details occurs 
the following: 

" Four dollars at Christmas, with which he may be 
drunk four days and four nights ; two dollars at Easter 
to effect the same purpose ; two dollars at Whitsuntide 
to be drunk for two days ; a dram in the morning, and 
a drink of grog at dinner at noon." 

The accomplished housewifery of Mrs. Washing- 
ton caused many a visitor to linger with fond reluc- 
tance and overstay his time, while the marriage of 
fair Nellie Custis to Lawrence Lewis, regular visits 
on Sunday to old Pohick Church, canvasback duck 
and old Madeira at the table of friends and neigh- 
bours up and down the river, varied the rural scene 
and mingled with the oils in which the taper swam 
a rich perfume of domestic joy. 

When the wild alarms of the maritime war with 
France, succeeding the insolent demands of the 



''The Glimmering- Taper" 453 

Barbary pirates, drew on, no one more heartily than 
Washington echoed the celebrated saying of Pinck- 
ney: '' Millions for defence, not a cent for tribute! " 
In fact, the conduct of the French Directorate, in 
its aggravated insults to America at this time, 
caused the one pang that thrilled through the tran- 
quillity of Mount Vernon. At sixty-eight Wash- 
ington's cup was full ; the century was about to run 
out ; at its verge where the old was about to become 
the new, where the eighteenth century with its storm 
and its calm, its turbulence and its revolutions, its 
wondrous evolutions in politics and civilisation, its 
eras of Anne and George, Frederick the Great, and 
Louis XVL, and Washington, was about to trans- 
form itself noiselessly into the century of Napoleon, 
of Waterloo, of Victoria, of Sedan, of United Italy 
and Imperial Germany: almost at the solemn mo- 
ment of transformation, quick as a flash, silent as a 
dream, beautiful as that strange moment which 
Raphael has selected as the moment of the Trans- 
figuration, the summons came. 

It was a Saturday night, almost at the end of the 
century, December 14, 1799, that, succumbing to an 
attack of acute laryngitis brought on by exposure to 
the December snow% Washington folded his arms 
across his breast, straightened his limbs decently in 
his bed, and casting a last look at his beloved wife, 
sitting in silent anguish at the foot of his bed, 
breathed his last. 



PEDIGREE OF THE WASHINGTONS. 

The Washingtons, like the Balls, were an ancient 
and honourable family long settled in that Eastern 
part of Virginia whence emanated the early illus- 
trious families of the Old Dominion. 

" Until recently," says John Fiske,^ " there was 
some uncertainty as to the pedigree of George Wash- 
ington, but the researches of Mr. Fitz Gilbert Waters, 
of Salem, have conclusively proved that he was 
descended from the Washingtons of Sulgrave, in 
Northamptonshire, a family that had for generations 
worthily occupied positions of honour and trust. In the 
Civil War the Washingtons were distinguished Royal- 
ists. The commander who surrendered Worcester in 
1646 to the famous Edward Whalley was Col. Henry 
Washington ; and his cousin John, who came to Vir- 
ginia in 1657, was great-grandfather of George Wash- 
ington. After the fashion that prevailed a hundred 
years ago, the most illustrious of Americans felt 
little interest in his ancestry ; but with the keener 
historic sense and broader scientific outlook of the 

^ Old Virginia and Her Neighbours. Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co. Vol. ii, p. 25. 

455 



4S6 Appendix 

present day, the importance of such matters is better 
appreciated. The pedigrees of horses, dogs, and 
fancy pigeons have a value that is quotable in terms 
of hard cash. Far more important, for the student 
of human affairs, are the pedigrees of men. By no 
possible ingenuity of constitution-making or of legis- 
lation can a society made up of ruffians and boors be 
raised to the intellectual and moral level of a society 
made up of well-bred merchants and yeomen, par- 
sons and lawyers. One might as well expect to see 
a dray horse win the Derby. It is, moreover, only 
when we habitually bear in mind the threads of indi- 
vidual relationship that connect one country with 
another, that we get a really firm and concrete grasp 
of history. Without genealogy the study of history 
is comparatively lifeless. No excuse is needed, there- 
fore, for giving in this connection a tabulated abridg- 
ment of the discoveries of Mr. Waters concerning 
the forefathers of George Washington. Beside the 
personal interest attaching to every thing associated 
with that immortal name, this pedigree has interest 
and value as being in large measure typical. It is a 
fair sample of good English middle-class pedigrees, 
and it is typical as regards the ancestry of leading 
Cavalier families in Virginia; an inspection of many 
genealogies of those who came between 1649 ^"^ 
1670 yields about the same general impression." 

The intertwining of the Ball and the Washington 
mottoes in this ever- famous union : Coelumque tueri 
(''Contemplate the Heavens") and Exitiis acta pro- 
bat ("The End proves the Act") produced a result 
surpassing the fairest dream of this prosaic geneal- 
ogist. 



Pedigree of the Washingtons^ 

Arms. — Argent, two bars and in chief three mullets Gules* 

John Washington, of 

Whitfield, Lancashire, 

time of Henry VI. 

I 

Robert Washington, 

of Warton, Lancashire, 2d son, 

I 

John Washington, of 

Warton, m. Margaret Kitson, sister of Sir Thomas 

Kitson, alderman of London. 



Lawrence Washington, of Gray's Inn, 
mayor of Northampton, obtained grant of Sulgrave Manor, 
d. 1584; m. Anna Pargiter, of Gretworth. 



539. 



Robert Washington, of 
Sulgrave, b. 1544; m. 
Elizabeth Light. 



Lawrence Washington, of 

Sulgrave and Brington, 

d. 1 6 16; m. Margaret Butler. 



Lawrence Washington, 
of Gray's Inn, register 
of High Court of Chancery, 
d. 1619. 

Sir Lawrence Washington, 
register of High Court of 
Chancery, d. 1643. 



Sir William Sir John 
Washington, Washington, 
d. 1643; m. d. 1678. 
Anna Villiers, 
half-sister of 
George Villiers, 
Duke of Buckingham. 

I 



Rev. Lawrence Washington, 
M. A., Fellow of Brasenose 
College, Oxford, Rector of 
Purleigh, d. before 1655. 



I 
Lawrence Washington, 
d. 1662; m. Eleanor 
Gyse. 



Henry Washington. John Washington, Lawrence Wash- Elizabeth Washington, 

colonel in the royalist b. 1631, d. 1677, came ington, b. 1635; heiress, d. 1693; m. 

army, governor of to Virginia, 1657; m. came to Virginia, Earl Ferrers. 

Worcester; d. 1664. Anna Pope. 1657. 

Lawrence Washington, 

d. 1697; m. Mildred, 

dau. of Augustine Warner. 

I 
Augustine Washington, 
b. 1694. d. 1749; m. Mary Ball. 

George Washington, b. 1732, d. i799- 
First President of the United States. 



^ Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, by John Fiske, Vol. 
Courtesy of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 



u, p. 27, 



458 Appendix 

" On the whole," continues John Fiske/ " It was 
a noble type of rural gentry that the Old Dominion 
had to show. Manly simplicity, love of home and 
family, breezy activity, disinterested public spirit, 
thorough wholesomeness and integrity, — such were 
the features of the society whose consummate flower 
was George Washington." 



* Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co. Vol. ii, p. 267. 



INDEX 



Abercrombie, General, iii 

Adams, John, jealousy of 
Washington , 123; insists 
on Jefferson's writing De- 
claration of Independence, 
180; opinion of Virginia, 
194; 2041249; member of 
Philadelphia Convention, 
1774, 262; proposes Wash- 
ington as Commander-in- 
chief, 265; on committee 
to draft Declaration of In- 
dependence 280; 294; 
American Commissioner to 
France, 352; Peace Com- 
missioner, 366; signs peace; 
379; Vice-President, 424, 
second time Vice-Presi- 
dent, 440; President, 446; 
describes his inaugura- 
tion, 448 

Adams, Samuel, 249; char- 
acter of, 251; his "regi- 
ments," 255 

Adirondacks, 302 

Administrations of Washing- 
ton, their characteristics, 
429 ; second administra- 
tion, 440 

Advertisement, Washing- 
ton's, of mission to the 
French, 56 

Age of Doubt, 197 

Agriculture, Washington's 
study of, 131 

Albany, 301 

Albemarle, Lord, 130 



Alexandria, 138; Christ 
Church, attended by Wash- 
ington, 159 

Alfieri, 433 

Algiers, treaty with, 447 

Alison, the historian, on 
Washington's Farewell Ad- 
dress, 444 

Alleghany River, 53 

Allen, Ethan, 276 

Alumni (William and Mary 
College), 185-186; Ban- 
croft on, 194 

"American Association" 
pledged to "boycott" 
British trade, 263 

American commerce, 
Franklin on, 308 

American Commission se- 
cures help from France, 299 

American Commission of 
Peace (i 783), 366 

American life, 2, 194-196 

American navy originated 
by John Paul Jones, 360 

American Revolution, con- 
sequences of, 215; Jeffer- 
son's opinion of its causes, 
258-259; Walpole on, 346; 
Jefferson's estimate of cost 
of, $170,000,000, 404 

Ammunition needed, 275 

"Anderson" (Major Andre), 
330 

Andre, Major, corresponds 
with Mrs. Arnold ; 2 79 ; 329 ; 
interview with Arnold, 
330; character of, 330; 
execution describea by 
Thacher, 332 

459 



46o 



Index 



Annapolis, Congress at, 382; 

383 

"Apollo Room" (Raleigh 
Tavern), 175; (Phi Beta 
Kappa Society), 188; 261 

Aranda, Count, predicts 
greatness of America, 389 

Arbuthnot, Admiral, 326 

"Arcady," 125-145 

Arms of the Washingtons, 
145; and see appendix 

Armstrong, Major, incites in- 
surrection, 363 

Arnold, Benedict, 276; 290; 
defeated on Lake Cham- 
plain, 301; influence on 
Burgoyne's surrender, 
career and character, 304; 
treason of, 328; Washing- 
ton's account of, 330; re- 
morse, 331; in Virginia, 
340; burns Richmond, etc., 
341; Washington to, on 
religion, 376 

Articles of Peace, 380 

Atkin put over Washington, 

105 
Austin, J. L., messenger from 
Congress, 349 



B 



Bacon, Nathaniel, 164 

Bahamas, 50 

Baker's Itinerary of Wash- 
ington quoted, 274, 364 

Ball, Joseph, brother of Mrs. 
Washington; his letter in- 
terfering with George's en- 
tering the British navy, 30 

Ball, Mary, character of, 9 

Baltimore, the Lords, 155 

Baltimore (city) , Congress 
flees to, 297 

Bancroft, George, quoted, 
194; on Navigation Act, 
205-208; describes Re- 
venue Act, 2 10-2 13; Stamp 
Act, 212; opinion of Frank- 
lin, 350-351 



Barbadoes, 50 

Bassett, Col., Washington 

writes to, 161 
Bastille, key of, 433 
Battle of Bennington, 303 
Battle of Blenheim, 145 
Battle of Brandywine, 307 
Battle of Brooklyn Heights, 

293 
Battle of Bunker Hill, 271; 

losses at, 293 
Battle of Camden, 333 
Battle of Cowpens, 338 
Battle of Guilford Court 

House, 338 
Battle of King's Mountain, 

338 
Battle of Lexington, 264 
Battle of Monmouth Court 

House, 317 
Battle of Princeton, 294 
"Battle of the Mononga- 

hela," described by Wash- 
ington, 98 
Battle of Trenton, 294 
Bauman, Col., 428 
Beaufort, Duke of, 187 
Beaumarchais, 350 
Bemis's Heights, 303 
Bennington, battle, 303 
Berkeley, Sir William, 164; 

opposes public schools, 

174; 174-175 
Bernard, describes Stamp 

Act, 194 
Beverley, Col. Robert, de- 
scribes Virginia, 18 
"Birth of the Constitution," 

388-421 
" Bishop," Washington's 

body -servant, 118 
Blair, "Master," 181 
Bland, Richard, 183; chosen 

delegate to Convention, 

1774, 261 
Board of Trade, 210 
Bohea (Boston "Tea 

Party"), 259 
Bolingbroke, Lord, 299 
Boscawen, Vice- Admiral, 79 



Index 



461 



Boston, 230, 234, 238; popu- 
lation at beginning of 
Revolution, 246; tea ships 
arrive, 254 ; Provincial 
troops assemble at, 268; 
the Common, 270; siege of, 
273; taken, 278; President 
Washington at, 432 

Boston ''Massacre," 250 

Boston Port Bill, 259, 260 

Boston "Tea-Party" 249, 
250 

Botetourt, Lord, 149; statue 
at Williamsburg, i66, 182; 
establishes medals at Wil- 
liam and Mary College, 
176; burial-place, (?), 187 

Boucher, Dr., 154, 155 

Bouquet, Col., 184 

"Boycotting" suggested by 
Washington, 225; and 
George Mason, 229 

Boyle, Robert, founds Indian 
school at Williamsburg, 

173; 177 

Boy's Journal (Washing- 
ton's), 34, 38 

Braddock, G^n., 68; sails 
for America, 79, 80; his 
plan disclosed to Franklin, 
81; his character, 82, 83; 
defeat and death, 85-102; 
last words, 97 

Brandywine, battle of, 307 

Breed's Hill, 272 

Breymann, 301 

British Commission at New- 
York, 294 

British forces, commanders 
of, at siege of Boston, 276 

British regulars, 99; Frank- 
lin's opinion of, 104; 291 

Broglie, Prince de, 361 

Brooklyn Heights, battle, 

293 

Brougham, Lord, quoted on 
Lord Chatham, 268 

Bruce, Philip, Economic His- 
tory of Virginia in the 
Seventeenth Century ^ 27, 



Bruton Church, Williams- 
burg, 167, 181; described 
by J. E. Cooke, 187-188 

Buccaneers, 208 

Buffalo, 185 

Bunker Hill, 272; obelisk on, 

273 

Bunker Hill, battle of, 271 

Burgesses of Virginia, de- 
scribed, 149; dismissed by 
Lord Dunmore, 190 

Burgoyne, Gen., at Boston, 
276; activity of, 301; cam- 
paign on Cham plain, 301; 
surrenders, 304; conse- 
quences, 310; 350 

Burke, Edmund, 146; esti- 
mates cost of American 
War, 215; 257; on con- 
ciliation, 275 

Bumaby , A. , t r a v e 1 s in 
America, describes Mount 
Vernon, 125; depicts Vir- 
ginians, 132-133; at Wil- 
liamsburg, 164 

Bumey, Capt., 367 

Bumey, Miss, 254; opinion of 
George IIL, 258; 290 

Burr, Aaron, 277 

Burwell, Rebecca (Jeffer- 
son's "fair Belinda"), 172 

Bushfield, 140 

Bute, ministry of, 210; 212 

Butler, Jane, first wife of 
Augustine Washington, 
her sons, 10 

Byrd, William, of Westover, 
History of the Dividing 
Line, 20; 144, 156, 176, 
177; founds Richmond, 1 82 



Cabinet, of Washington, 428; 

second Cabinet of, 442 
Cadwallader, Gen., 317 
" Caesar had his Brutus," etc. 

(incident), 218 
Calverts, the (of Maryland), 

intermarry with the Cus- 

tises, 155 



462 



Index 



Cambridge, Washington at, 

272 

Camden, Lord, 257 

Camden, battle of, 333; 336 

Campbell, Col., 338 

Campbell, the poet, on 
Kosciuszko, 300; Ger- 
trude of Wyoming, 325 

Canada, 67, 197, 198; opera- 
tions in, 290 

Canal projected by Wash- 
ington, etc., 406 

Canova, the sculptor, 433 

Capel and Osgood Hanbury, 
Washington's letter to, 192 

Capitals (of Virginia), 163 ' 

Carleton, Sir Guy, 277, 301; 
Peace Commissioner, 357; 
announces terms of peace, 

369 
Carlton House described by 

Thackeray, 383 
Carolina, 290 

Carpenters' Hall, Philadel- 
phia Convention meets at, 

261 
Carrington, Mrs. Edward, 

121, 122 
Carter, Councillor, 140, 144 
Cartier, Jacques, 48 
Cary, Mary, 34 
Cary, Robert, Washington's 

letter to, 193 
Cary, Robert, & Co., Wash- 
ington's letter to, 126; 127, 

138 
Catharine of Russia, 311 
Census of the United States 

(the first), 430 
Census of Virginia, 112 
Chamberlayne, Mr., 117 
Chambly, 277 
Champlain, Lake, campaign 

on, 277; 301 
Charleston, defence of, 291; 

326, 334; evacuated by 

British, 357 
Charlotte (N. CaroHna), 336 
Charlottesville, Tarleton's 

raid on, 341 



Chastellux, Marquis de, 145; 
describes Washington, 331 

Chateaubriand, describes In- 
dians, 203; on Washington, 

433 

Chatham, Lord, quoted on 
American policy, 257; on 
Gen. Gage, 268; 269; op- 
poses Indian warfare, 295 

Chesapeake Bay, Lord Howe 
sails up, 307 

Christ Church (Alexandria), 
attended by Washington 
after the Revolution, 159 

Cincinnati, 156 

Cincinnati, Society of , found- 
ed, 378-379; 413 

Circular Letters (of legis- 
latures), 250 

Circular Letter (Washing- 
ton's), to thirteen States, 

City Hall (Wall Street, New 
York), Declaration of In- 
dependence read in, 283 

Clark, George Rogers, con- 
quers North- Western Terri- 
tory, 391; expedition 
described by Lodge, 392; 
P. Henry on, 393-394 

Clement XIV, 311 

Clinton, Gov., 371 

Clinton, Sir Henry, 272; at 
Charleston, 291 ; evacuates 
Philadelphia, 317:326, 334 

Clive, Lord, 327 

"Cockatrice's Egg," 214-239 

Colonial, life in America, 3, 
133; (Christmas, 139 

Colonies, impatience of, 198 

Colonies, the north-eastern, 
character of, 244 

Colville, Admiral, enforces 
Navigation Act, 207 

Commander-in-chief (Wash- 
ington), 265 

Commissary Department, 
condition of, 313 

Committees of Correspond- 
ence, 200, 250, 263 



Index 



463 



Common, the Boston, 270 

Concord, battle near, 264 

Congress, first American, in 
1690, 52 

Congress, incompetency of, 
298; 327; mistreats Arnold, 
Morgan, etc., 3S3'^ 34o; 
McMaster on, 403 ; meets 
at Philadelphia, 432 

" Conotocarius," "Destroyer 
of Cities," Indian nick- 
name for Washington, 1 1 1 

Constitution, the American, 
Gladstone's opinion of, 
149; its evolution in 1787, 
416; a compromise, 418 

Constitution of the United 
States ratified, 420 

Continental Congress, first 
clerk of, 252; Chatham's 
opinion of, 257 

Continental Policy, the, 298 

Contraband, 208 

Contrecoeur, French com- 
mander, 69 

Convention called Aug. i, 
1774, 261 

Convention (May, 1786), 
John Adams on, 194 

Convention of States sug- 
gested by Virginia, 1 786, 408 

Convention of Virginia (2d 
Revolutionary, 1775), 264 

Conway, intrigues of, 317 

Conway, M. D., describes 
Washington's "Rules of 
Civility," 13; on Washing- 
ton's character, 34; 35, 36 

Conway Cabal, machinations 
of, 316 

Cooke, John Esten, describes 
William and Mary College, 
185-186 

"Cornstalk," 203 

Comwallis, Lord, 284, 291, 
294, 326; defeats Gates at 
Camden, 333; marches for 
Yorktown, 340; reaches 
Yorktown, 342 ; surrenders, 
342 



Correspondence, Committees 
of, 263 

Correspondence (Washing- 
ton's), 397 

Courts of Admiralty estab- 
lished by Grenville, 207 

Cowpens, battle of, 338 

"Craigie House," 142; Wash- 
ington's headquarters, 273 

Cresap, Col., 40 

Crevecoeur, Hector St. John 
de, Washington's letter to, 
on presidency, 425 

Crisis, the, arrives, 238 

Crown Point, 105, 277, 291 

Cully, 119 

Cumberland, Duke of, head 
of military affairs, 210 

Currency, condition of, 321; 
coins, 405 

"Curriculum," Washington's, 

Custis, Col. Daniel Parke, 
his widow, 33; first hus- 
band of Martha Washing- 
ton, 116; his children by 
her, 116 

Custis, G. W. P., account of 
Washington's mother, 7; 8, 
9; describes Washington's 
courtship and marriage, 
117; his Recollections, 353; 
describes Washington's 
visit to his mother, 353- 

Custis, " Jackie, " (John 
Parke), 136, 155; enters 
King's College, New York, 
155; death, 353 

Custis, Nellie, 141, 353; on 
" Farmer Washington, "449 ; 
marries Lawrence Lewis, 

452 
Custis, Patsy, 136; dies, 160 



Dale, Sir Thomas, admiration 
of Virginia, 24 



464 



Index 



Dandridge, Mrs. (Martha 
Washington's mother), i6i 

Dandridge, Francis (Mrs. 
Washington's uncle), letter 
to, 191 

Dandridge, Martha, (the 
widow Custis), marries 
Washington, 116 ; de- 
scribed, 115; personal ap- 
pearance, 120-122; 125 

Dartmouth, Earl of, anec- 
dote, 262 

Date of Washington's mar- 
riage, 324 

Davies, Rev. Samuel, opinion 
of Washington, 146-147 

"Day Star of the Revolu- 
tion " (Patrick Henry), 
219 

"Deadly Tea-Chest," the, 
240-255 

Deane, Silas, opmion of 
Southerners, 262 

De Barras, Admiral, at New- 
port, 340 

Declaration of Independence, 
275; proclaimed July 4, 
1776, 279; opening para- 
graphs, 280 ; read to troops, 

283 

Declaration of Rights, 181 

De Grasse, Count, 299; sails 

for Yorktown, 340; arrives, 

342 ; defeated and captured, 

359 
De Heister (commander of 

the Hessians), 291 
De Kalb, 299 
Delaware capes. Sir W. Howe 

appears at, 307 
Delaware River, crossing of, 

294 
Democratic government, evils 

of, 410 
Deserters, 293 
D'Estaing, Count, 300 
Detroit, 393 
" Devilsburg " (Jefferson's 

name for Williamsburg), 

172 



Dickinson, John, hopes for 

reconciliation, 275 

Dictator, Washington ap- 
pointed, 296 

Digby, Admiral, Peace Com- 
missioner, 357 

Dinwiddie, Governor, selects 
Washington, 53, 54, 57; 
commissions Washington, 
65 ; instructions to Wash- 
ington, 69; describes 
Washington's capture at 
Fort Necessity, 77; Wash- 
ington's letter describing 
Braddock's defeat, 98- 
100; writes to Abercrom- 
bie about Washington, 
1 1 1 ; sends census of Vir- 
ginia to London Board of 
Trade, 112; leaves for 
England, 112 

Diplomacy of eighteenth cen- 
tury, 66, 352 

Dismal Swamp, to drain, 156 

Dispatches to Congress estab- 
lished by Washington, 275 

District of Columbia, 432 

Disunion, threatened, 401; 
403, 408, 430 

Dobbs Ferry, first salute 
fired in honour of American 
nation, 371 

Dorchester Heights, 278 

Drayton, the poet, Ode to 
Vtrginia, 174 

Dunbar, Col., 96, 99 

Dunmore, Lord, arrives, 155; 
seeks Washington's advice, 
156; character, 156; at 
Williamsburg, 16 4-1 77 , 
palace at Williamsburg , 
166-167; flees, 188; ad- 
dresses Burgesses, 189; 
Washington's relations 

with, 260-261; dissolves 
Burgesses, 261; "Gun- 
powder" affair, 265 

Duquesne, Fort, 61, 64, 69, 
81, 105, 113, 120 

Duty on tea, 233 



Index 



465 



East India Company, the, 

327 

East Indies, 327 

•'Ebbing Tide," 345-365 

Eden, Governor, 155 

Edwards, Jonathan, writings 
of, 200; Aaron Burr grand- 
son of, 277 

Eighteenth century in Amer- 
ica, characteristics of, 12; 
scepticism of, 197 

Elizabethtown, winter quar- 
ters at, 323- 

Elk River, 307 

EUicott, 432 

"Emancipation," 204 

Erie, P'ort, 53 

Erskine, Thomas, Lord, on 
Washington, 436 

Etiquette of Washington's 
administration, 429, 430 



"Fabian Policy" 284, 288 
Fairfax, Bryan, Washing- 
ton's letters to, on taxa- 
tion, 230-238; 231 
Fairfax, Col. George, 34 
Fairfax, Thomas, Lord, 23; 
resides at Greenway Court, 
26, engages Washington 
as surveyor, 32; described 
by Woodrow Wilson, 36,73 
Fairfax County, resolutions 

of its inhabitants, 231 
"Fairfax Resolves," 260 
Fairfaxes, Belvoir, 28 
Farewell, to his army, 
Washington's, 379; to his 
country, 445 ; authorship 

of, 445' 
Fasting, day of, 261 
Fauntlero}', Betsy, 34 
Fauquier, Governor, 177; 

letter to Halifax on Stamp 

Act, 193-194 



"Federal City" planned and 
laid out, 432 

Federal Convention (at 
Philadelphia, 1787), 412; 
its members, 414; diarists 
of, 415 

Federal Union, origin de- 
scribed by Marshall, 41 1 ; a 
compromise, 418; ratified, 
420 

Federalism, 414 

Ferguson, 337 

Fire (at Williamsburg), 182 

"First Citizen of the United 
States," 422-448 

Fiscal policy, 435 

Fiske, John, describes the 
French, 52; enumerates 
five leaders of the Revolu- 
tion, 1 76 ; on tea, as symbol 
of tyranny, 242; on Wash- 
ington's military capacity, 
285; on Washington's 
"Circular Letter," 377; on 
problems involved in 
Treaty of Paris, 389 

Fithian, Master, describes 
Virginia life, 140, 143; dies, 
144 

Fitzhugh, Col. William, 64 

Five Governors (Sharpe, 
Shirley, Delancy, Morris, 
and Dinwiddie) consult, 
82-83 

Flag, the first, unfurled at 
Cambridge, 277; described, 
278 

Fleming, William, 222 

Fleur-de-lis, 201 

Florida, 443 

Ford, Paul Leicester, de- 
scribes Martha W^ashing- 
ton, 123; 171, 172 

Ford, W\ C., 75, 230, 268 

Foreign officers, 299 

"Forms of Writing," Wash- 
ington's copy-book, 12 

Fort Cumberland, 90; Cum- 
berland, 91 

Fort Necessity, 77, 90 



466 



Index 



Fort Niagara, 65, 8 1 

Fort Washington, 144, 279; 
surrenders, 293 

"Four Georges," the (Thack- 
eray's), 258 

Fourth of July, 1776, Declar- 
ation of Independence, 
279 

Fox, Charles James, 146, 346; 
on Washington, 434 

France, influence of , 1 6 ; power 
of, 78; war with, 105; 
Walpole's opinion of, 202; 
sends help, 299; 300; ac- 
knowledges America's in- 
dependence, 311; alliance 
with America, 315; loan, 
340; war with England, 

430 

Franklin, Benjamin, con- 
trasted with Washington, 
83, 84; invents harmoni- 
cum, 140, 199,200; insulted 
in London, 260; Franklin, 
Benjamin, on Committee 
to draft Declaration of In- 
dependence, 280; Commis- 
sioner, 294; on American 
population and commerce, 
308; gets loan fromFrance, 
340; seen at his lodg- 
mgs, 349; his char- 
acter as diplomat, 350; 
Peace Commissioner, 366; 
signs Peace, 380; work as 
commissioner, 380; Lecky 
on, 381 ; paper on American 
Constitution, 417 

Franklin, Benjamin, auto- 
biography, 79, 80 

"Franklin," State of, 409 

Frederick the Great, 196; 
ridicules mercenaries, 278; 
admires Washington, 284 

Fredericksburg, Washington 
at, 354 

French, the, described by 
Fiske, 52; their mission 
work, 55-56; troops return 
to France, 366 



French and Indian wars, 
cost of, 179 

French fleet dispersed at 
Newport, 324 

French Revolution, 438, 441 

Freneau attacks Washing- 
ton, 436 

Frontier 1 fe, 104 

Fry, Col. Joshua, 69, 73 



Gage, Gen. 93; conduct at 
Boston, 234; 238; Lexing- 
ton, 264; Lord Chatham 
on, 268; 277 

Gardner, Col., 272 

Gates, Gen., 275, 291; plots 
against Washington, 297; 
supersedes Schuyler, 303; 
injustice to Arnold, 305 ; 
announces Burgoyne's sur- 
render, 310; intrigues, 317; 
head of Southern Depart- 
ment, 333; defeated at 
Camden, ;^^^; Lodge on 
Gates, 335-336; anony- 
mous articles attributed to, 
363; 364; put in command 
of right wing, 366 

Gazette, the Williamsburg, 
142, 237 

General Assembly of Vir- 
ginia, its powers, 217 

Genesee, valley of, 325 

Genet, French Minister, in- 
sults America, 435; 442 

Gentleman's Magazine the, 
describes Washington's re- 
signation, 385 

George 1 1 1, presents commun- 
ion service to Bruton 
Church, 188; 200; sanctions 
Navigation Act, 207; 
Patrick Henry on, 218; 
Miss Bumey's opinion on, 
258; Jefferson's opinion of, 
258; "The die is cast," 
288; described by J. R. 
Green, 289; insults John 



Index 



467 



George Til — Continued 

Adams, 352; signs Articles 
of Peace, 380 

Georgian Era, 254 

Gerard, M. (French envov), 

323 

Germane, Lord George, 352 

Germantown, 307 

Gerry, of Massachusetts, op- 
poses Constitution, 421 

Gertrude of Wyoming, 325 

Gibson upon Horses, Wash- 
ington's study of, 131 

Gist, Mr., gtiide, 57 

"Give me liberty, or give me 
death," 264 

Gladstone, W. E., opinion of 
American Constitution, 149 

"Glimmering Taper," 449- 

453 

Goethe, 408 

Golden Age of the Republic, 
436 

"Golden Milestone," 146- 
162 

Government, cost of (eight- 
eenth century), 202 

Green, Rev. Charles, rector of 
Truro Parish, 156-157 

Green, John Richard, de- 
scribes Washington, 287; 
on George III, 289 

Greene, Gen., describes 
Washington's appearance, 
274; 307; at Monmouth, 
320; supersedes Gates, 338; 
captures Charleston, 357; 
congratulated by Wash- 
ington on Charleston cam- 
paign, 367 

Greene, Nathaniel, Mrs., 141, 

323 

Greenway Court, 17, 37 

Grenville, Lord, 205 ; defends 
Navigation Act, 206-207; 
211 ; peace, 366 

Gridley, Col., 272 

Griffiths, Rev. David, dis- 
covers Lee's treachery, 318 

"Grog," origin of term, 28 



Growth of communities, 194- 
195 

Guilford Court House, battle 
of, Z3^ 

"Gunpowder" affair (in Vir- 
ginia), 265 

"Gunston Hall," 143; the 
Madson's of, 144 



H 



Haldimund (Governor-Gen- 
eral of Quebec), 359 

Hale, Nathan, 331 

"Half-King," the, Washing- 
ton's address to, 60; 70, 72, 

73 

Halifax, Earl of, 193, 194, 
210 

Halket, Sir Peter, 99 

Hamilton, English com- 
mander in the West, 391 

Hamilton, Governor of Penn- 
sylvania, 54 

Hamilton, Alexander, 176, 
318, 319; at Yorktown, 
342; letter from Washing- 
ton on Peace, 368; urges 
Washington to accept 
presidency, 422; Secretary 
of the Treasury, 428 ; urges, 
Washington's re-election, 

438 

Hampton Roads, 48 

Hancock, John, president of 
Second Revolutionary Con- 
gress, 265 ; anecdote of, 433 

Hanson Samuel, 423 

Harland, Marion, description 
of Washington's home, 5-6 

Harlem Heights, defended, 
279 

Harlem Plains, battle, 293 

Harrison, Benjamin, delegate 
to Convention, 1774, 261; 
322; letter to, from Wash- 
ington, 395 

Harrisons (of Brandon), 144 



468 



Index 



Hartley, David, signs Peace, 

379 
Harvard, John, birth, founds 

Harvard College, 247 
Harvard College, 166, 173, 
248; Washington lodges 
at, 273; confers LL.D. on 
Washington, 278 
Hastings, Warren, 327 
"Heart of the Revolution," 

283 seqq. 
Heights of Abraham, 201 
Henry, Patr'ck, examined in 
law at Williamsburg, 171; 
character of, 179; first 
American Governor of Vir- 
ginia, 180; 189, 196; reso- 
lutions of, 189; his own 
account of their origin, 
221-222; delegate to Con- 
vention, 1774, 261; draws 
up Bill of Grievances, 262; 
dominates second Virginia 
Revolutionary Convention, 
1775, 264; captain in 
"Gunpowder" affair, 265; 
commissions George Rogers 
Clark, 391; to Legislature, 
on Clark's success, 393; 
opposes ratification of the 
Constitution, 1787, 420 
Hessians, 291; captured, 296 
Hobby, Master, sexton, 11 
Home industries in the 

colonies, 255 
Horses, names of Washing- 
ton's, 132 
Houdon the sculptor, 433 
House of Burgesses (Wil- 
liamsburg), described by 
Hugh Jones, 170; 175, 178 
House of Commons, 201, 209, 

215 
House of Hanover, 220 
House of Lords, 202, 209 
"How I Became a Rebel" 

(Washington), 224-238 
Howe, Gen. Lord, resistance 

at Boston, 272; wounded, 

273; retreats from Boston, 



278; lands on Staten 

Island, 279; 291; enters 

Philadelphia, 307 
Hudson Highlands, 324 
Hudson River, 291, 293 
Hughes, John, describes 

Stamp Act, 194 
Humphreys, Col., 426 
Hunting Creek, residence of 

the Washingtons, 13 
"Hunting Lodge," or "Epse- 

wasson" (Mount Vernon), 

51 
Hutchinson, writings of, 200; 
249; "spy" letters, 249; 
260 



Immigration to America, 17 

Imports, 229 

Inauguration of Washington, 

426; ceremonies, 427 
Indentured servants, 14 
Independence acknowledged 

by France, 311 
India Company, East, 230; 

tea in warehouses, 243 
Indian policy of Washington, 

437 

Indians, Pamunkies, Chicka- 
hominies, Shawnees, Min- 
gos, Cherokees, 48; 73; 
their nature, 62; 198, 203; 
Lord Chatham on, 295- 
296; 301; Six Nations, 325; 
390; Washington's policy 
towards, 437 

"Indians" (of Boston Tea- 
Party), 249 

"Inviolable union," Wash- 
ington on, 368-369; 421 

Invoice, Washington's, to R. 
Cary & Co., 127-129; 139 

Iroquois, 95, 325 



Jackson, Richard, opposes 
Stamp Act, 212 



Index 



469 



Jackson, Robert, 101-102; 
letter to, describing Brad- 
dock's defeat, 101-102 

Jacobins, the, 435, 441 

James, Major, anecdote of, 
334 

James I, charters and privi- 
leges, 216 

James River and Kanawha 
Canal project, 156 

James River, Falls of, 182 

Jamestown, 17, 177; first 
capital of Virginia 163; 164; 
described by Hugh Jones, 
168 

Jay, John, 350; American 
Commissioner to France, 
352; Peace Commissioner, 
366; signs Peace, 380; 
Secretary of State, 428; 
first Chief Justice of U. S. 
Supreme Court, 435; sent 
to England to negotiate 
treaty, 442 

Jefferson, Peter, 69; con- 
structs map of Virginia, 
406 

Jefferson, Thomas, educated 
at William and Mary 
College, 149; 160; suggests 
Richmond for capital of 
Virginia, 171; student at 
Williamsburg, 171; first 
letter from, 172; gets sur- 
veyor's license at William 
and Mary College, 175; 
learning, 180; Governor, 
182; founds University of 
Virginia, 183; anecdote of, 
1 89 ; account of debate on 
Henry's "Resolutions," 
217; on Henry's "Resolu- 
tions," 222-223 ; opinion of 
George III, and causes of 
American Revolution, 258; 
writes Declaration of In- 
dependence, 280; estimates 
cost of war, 404 ; Secretary 
of State, 428; urges Wash- 
ington's re-election, 439 



Jenkinson (Secretary of the 
Treasury) , favours Stamp 
Act, 212 

Jersey campaign, 294 

Jesuit fathers, 15, 203 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 241; 
ridicules Americans, 260 

Johnson, Thomas (of Mary- 
land), nominates Wash- 
ington commander-in-chief, 
266 

Johnston, George, supports 
Henry's "Resolutions," 
218; Jefferson on, 222 

Jones, Hugh, "The State of 
Virginia," chaplain of, 21- 
22; describes Williams- 
burg, 168-171 

Jones, John Paul, originates 
American navy, 360 

Journal of Washington, giv- 
ing account of his mission 
to the French, 56-57 

Jumonville, M., killed, 71; 75 



K 



Kanawha, the Great, river, 

151 ; canal, 156 
Kaskaskia, 391 
"King George's man," 52 
King of Spain, 401 
King's Bridge, 279 
King's College (New York), 

155 
King's Mountain, battle of, 

"Knights of the Golden 
Horse Shoe," 177, 185 

Knox, Gen., 323; on alliance, 
323; suggests ' ' Society of 
Cincinnati," 378, letter 
from Washington to, 396; 
writes to Washington, 405 ; 
letter from Washington on 
the presidency, 425; Secre- 
tary of War, 428 

Kosciuszko, 299, 300 



470 



Index 



"La Belle Riviere" (the 
Ohio), 64 

La Fayette, 16; lays comer- 
stone of obelisk on Bun- 
ker's Hill, 273; 299, 300; 
describes American army 
at Valley Forge, 313; 317; 
in Virginia, 340; letter 
from Washington on dread 
of disunion, 369; Washing- 
ton on religion, 376; letter 
from Washington on Mount 
Vernon, 395; visits Wash- 
ington, 397; letter from 
Washington on inland nav- 
igation, 407 ; on the powers 
of Congress, 410; on the 
preisdency, 423 

Lake George, 303 

Latin verses (William and 
Mary College), 188 

Laurens, father and son, 346 

Laurens, Col. John, letter 
from Washington to, 359; 
366 

Lauzun, Due de, 346 

"League of Friendship," 409 

Le Boeuf, Fort, 63, 65 

Lecky, historian, quoted, 
257; on Franklin, 381 

Lee (of Stratford and Chantil- 

ly), 144 

Lee, Charles ("soldier of 
fortune"), 276; captured, 
294; hatching treason, 315; 
treachery at Monmouth 
Court House, 317 

Lee, "Light Horse" Harry, 

307. 33^ 

Lee, Richard Henry, chosen 
delegate to Convention, 
1774, 261 ; draws up Bill of 
Grievances, 262 ; 275 ; letter 
from Washington propos- 
ing inland navigation 
scheme, 407 

Leisler, Jacob, convenes first 
American Congress, 52 



L' Enfant, Major, 432 
Leslie, Lieutenant, describes 

Braddock's defeat, 95 
Lewis, Andrew, 285 
Lewis, Fielding, 327 
Lexington, battle of, 264 
"Liberty, Property, No 

Stamps" (cry 1765-1775), 

240 
Library (of William and 

Mary College) , its contents, 

173; 183 

Lincoln, Gen., surrenders 
Charleston, 326; at York- 
town, 343, 344, 404 

Literature, American, 200 

Little Meadows, 91 

Livingston, Robert, on com- 
mittee to draft Declaration 
of Independence, 280 

Livingston, R. R., adminis- 
ters oath of office to Wash- 
ington, 427 

Locke, John, 299 

Lodge, H. C, quoted on Loy- 
alists, 334-335; describes 



backwoodsmen, 



337; on 



Washington quelling in- 
surrection, 363 ; on Wash- 
ington's resignation, 386; 
on conquest of North- 
western Territory, 392 

Logan, 203 

London Magazine, quotes 
Washington, 77 

Longfellow House, Washing- 
ton's headquarters, 273 

Long Island, 279; defensive 
works on, 279 

Lossing, Washington and 
the A merican Republic 
147; describes Williams- 
burg, 165; consequences of 
Burgoyne's surrender, 310; 
quoted on England's de- 
feat, 388-389 

Loudon, Lord, 105, iii, 130 

Louis Philippe, 45 1 

Louis XV, King of France, 
65, 200 



Index 



471 



Louis XVI, executed, 441 

Louisville, 156 

"Lowland Beauty," 34 

Loyalists, 283; of the Caro- 
linas, 334; 337 

Luzerne, M. (French Min- 
ister), 325 



M 



Maclay (of Pennsylvania), 
436 

McHenry, James, 360; letter 
from Washington describ- 
ing occupations at Mount 
Vernon, 449 

McMaster, J. B., quoted, 403 

Madison, Bishop, first bishop 
of Virginia, 187 

Madison, Mrs. Dolly, 416 

Madison, James, hostility to 
P. Henry, 222; inland 
navigation, 406; on Fed- 
eral Convention , 1787,412; 
keeps a private journal of, 
415; its importance, 415- 
416 

Maine, 244 

Mann, Sir Horace, letter to, 
from Walpole on American 
Revolution, 214 

Marie Antoinette executed 
441 

Marion, Gen., 285, 338 

Marksmen, American, 304 

Marshal, John, L-ije of 
Washington , 148, 149; 
educated at William and 
Mary College, 175; bio- 
grapher and jurist, 409; 
on origin of the Federal 
Union, 411, 414; on Wash- 
ington's first administra- 
tion, 443 ; summarises 
Washington's policies, 446 

Marye, James, school founded 
by him at Fredericksburg, 
attended by three presi- 
dents, 14 



Maryland, population, 138; 
suggests Convention of 
States, 1785, 408 

Mason, George, 157; Wash- 
ington's letter to, on taxa- 
tion, 224-228; answers, 
228-230; "The Fairfax 
Resolves," 260; opposes 
Federal Constitution, 417 

Masons elect Washington 
member, 396 

Massachusetts, men of, 196; 
244, seqq., denned, 244; 
calls Convention, 1774, 261 ; 
troops furnished by, 270 

Massachusetts Bay, crisis in 
the colony of, 238; charac- 
teristics of, 246 

"Massacre, The Boston," 250 

Maurepas, M. de, quotes 
Racine on Cornwallis, 346 

Maury, Rev. James, takes 
part in the Parsons' Case, 
220 

Maxims of the "Rules of 
Civility," 15 

Mayflower, the, 245 

Meade, Bishop, 30, 122; de- 
scribes Washington's 
chariot, 134; describes 
Pohick church, 157; writes 
of Williamsburg, 186-187 

Men of the Revolution (Wil- 
liamsburg), 183-184 

Mephistopheles, spirit of, 197 

Mercenaries (Hessians) , 

Lord Chatham on, 269; 
hired, 278 

"Merrie Christmas," 366-387 

"Middle Plantation," 149, 
164, 168 

Middlebrook, winter quarters 
at, 300; 323 

Mifflin, Gen., 284; receives 
Washington's sword and 
final words, 382-385 ; 386- 

387 
Militia, 336 
"Mind your Business" 

(motto), 252 



472 



Index 



"Minute Men," 264 

Mississippi River, 201 

Mohawk Valley, 302 

Monacatoocha, 70 

Monckton, Col., 320 

Monmouth Court House, 
battle, 317 

Monongahela River, 53 

Montcalm, Gen., 74, 201 

Montgomery, Gen., 277; de- 
feat and death at Quebec, 
277; 290 

Montreal, and Quebec, cam- 
paign against, 277, 290 

Morgan, Cap. Daniel, cap- 
tured at Quebec, 277; his 
riflemen, ^S3' 33^ 

Morris, Gouverneur, reforms 
currency, 406 

Morris, Robert, financier, 340 

Morristown, winter quarters 
at, 298; 325 

Morse, J. T., quoted on 
Franklin, 350 

Moultrie, Gen., 285, 291, 339 

Mount Vernon, name of, 13; 
51; life at, 125-145; almost 
a "tavern," 142; fox hunt- 
ing, 152; Sunday at, 156; 
Washington's visits to, 356 ; 
improvements to, 397; 
visitors at, 433, 450 

Muhlenberg, F. A., speaker of 
House, 428 

Mutiny in army, 363-366 

N 

Napoleon admires Wash- 
ington, 284 

National Road, 407 

Navigation, inland, scheme 
of, 406 

Navigation Act, 203, 204, 
«o5, 206; enforced by Col- 
ville, 207 

Nelson, Chancellor, 187 

Nelson, Gen., 322 

Neutrality, Washington's 

policy on, 429; eulogised 
by Fox, 434; 441 



Newburgh, camp at, 358, 364 
New England, its mental and 
moral characteristics, 244, 
seqq.; civilisation of, 252 
"New Forces," 19 1-2 13 
Newport, 324; Rochambeau's 

fleet at, 326 
New York, Washington com- 
mands at, 279; strategic 
importance of, 279; Old 
City Hall, 283; British 
troops, 291; operations 
around, 292; 340; Wash- 
ington inaugurated at, 426 
Nicholas, Robert Carter, 171 
Nicholson (royal Governor), 
163; moves capital to Wil- 
liamsburg, 163-164; 168, 
176 
Nicola, Lewis, Col., wants 

Washington king, 358 
" Nomini Hall," 140 
North, Lord, 255, 256; his 
Manifesto, 278; ministry of, 
described by J. R. Green, 
289 
"Northern Neck," the, de- 
scribed by Fithian, 140 
Northey (whig lawyer), 211 
"North- West Territory," 67 
Numbers (troops in the 
Revolution), their char- 
acter, 270 

O 

Obelisk, on Bunker's Hill, 

273 

O'Hara, Gen., 343 

Ohio Company, the, 67, 68, 
130 

Ohio River, 48, 53; Forks of, 
58, 69 

"Old Billy," Washington's 
body servant, 452 

" Old ' Capitol" (Williams- 
burg), 167-168; described 
by Hugh Jones, 1O9-170; 
by J. E. Cooke, 189 

"Old Magazine" (Williams- 
burg), 167 



Index 



473 



"Old Point," 48 

"Old Williamsburg," 163- 
191 ; second capital of Vir- 
ginia, 163; built in form of 
cypher, 168; festivities at, 
170 

"On to \orktown," 312-344 

Opponents of Henry's " Reso- 
lutions" 217 

Orderly Book (Washing- 
ton's), account of Arnold's 
treachery, 330; thanks 
army, 365 ; cessation of 
hostilities, 371 

Osgood, Samuel, Postmaster- 
General under Washington, 
428 

Oswald (British Peace Com- 
missioner), 366 

Otis, James, 249 



Page, John, 172 

Page, Sir John, presents com- 
munion service to Bruton 
Church, 188 

Paine, Thomas, to Washing- 
ton, 347 

"Palace," (at Williamsburg) , 
189 

Paris, Treaty of (1763), 200 

Parke, family of, 145 

Parker, Sir Peter, at Charles- 
ton, 291 

Parkman, the historian, de- 
scribes Braddock's march, 
92 

Parliament, authority of, 255 

Parhamentary government 
in America, 209 

"Parsons' Case," 179; Patrick 
Henry's part in, 219 

Party feeling, 443 

Passy, Franklin at, 349 

Peace, 357, 366; signed, 380 

Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 65 

Peale, Charles Wilson, paints 
Washington's portrait, 153 

Pendleton, Edmund, 183, 
222; delegate to Conven- 



tion, 1774, 261; drafts 
Washington's will, 267; 
President of Virginia Con- 
vention of 1788, 420 

"Peninsula, The" (of Vir- 
ginia), 171 

Pepys on tea, 241 

Percy, Earl, 291 

Petitions to Parliament 
against American war, 276 

Phi Beta Kappa Society ori- 
ginates at William and 
Mary CxDllege, 1776, 183; 
188 

Philadelphia, first Revolu- 
tionary Convention meets 
at Carpenters' Hall, 261; 
second Revolutionary Con- 
gress meets at, 265; cap- 
tured by Howe, 307, 
evacuated by British, 317; 
Congress again at, 321; 
Washington at, 356; Fed- 
eral Convention of 1787 at, 
412; Second Congress under 
Washington meets at, 432 

Philadelphia Convention 

(1774), 261; in session 51 
days, described by W. 
Wilson, 262-263 

Philipse, Mary, 141 

Pickering, 442 

Pilgrim pioneers, 195 

Pinckney, 453 

Pit'cairn, Maj., 273 

Pitt, William, 146; secretary 
to Charlton, 277; 346 

Pittsburg (Fort Duquesne), 
61 

Plymouth Rock, 246 

Pocahontas, 164 

Pohick Church, 156; de- 
scribed by Bishop Meade, 

Poland, 300 

Pontiac, 203 

Population, of Virginia under 
Dinwiddie, 112; of North 
America during Revolu- 
tion, 196; 256 



474 



Index 



Port-Bill (Boston), 259 
Porto Bello captured, 28 
Potomac River, 137, 151, 

156 

"Powder Horn" (see "Old 
Magazine"), 176; robbed of 
its powder by Dunmore, 
265 

Powhatan, King, 164 

Precedents, 210 

Preliminaries of Peace 
(signed), 367 » 37° 

Prescott, Col., 272 

Prescott, Gen., exchanged 
for Lee, 315 

Prince Regent, the, Thack- 
eray on, 383-384 

Princeton, battle of, 294; 
Congress flees to, 366; 
Washington' s ' ' Farewell ' ' 
at, 379 

Principles of Union (Wash- 
ington's), 372-373 

Privy Council, 208 

Provost, Dr. Samuel, 428 

Pryor, Mrs. Roger, describes 
Washington's boyhood, 26, 
27, 28 

Pulaski, 299, 300 

Puritanism, 247 

Putnam, Gen., 272; com- 
mands centre at Boston, 
276 



Q 



Quartering of troops, 260 

Quebec, death of Mont- 
gomery at, 277; 290 

Queen Anne, distinguishes 
the Parkes, 145; 210 

Queen Charlotte, Miss Bur- 
ney on, 290 

Quincy, Josiah, 249 



R 



Raleigh, Sir Walter, 20 



"Raleigh Tavern" (Wil- 
liamsburg), 150; Apollo 
Room at, 175, 188, 261 

Rales, Col., mortally 

wounded, 296 

Randolph, Edmund, anec- 
dote of Washington, 130; 
incident, 189; Governor of 
Virginia, opposes Federal 
Constitution of 1787, 417; 
Attorney-General under 
Washington, 428; urges 
Washington's re-election, 
439; accused of bribe tak- 
ing, 442 

Randolph, John, Attorney- 
General, 171, 187; "Spuri- 
ous Letters" attributed to, 
316 

Randolph, Sir John, father 
of John and Peyton, 187 

Randolph, Col. Peter, 172 

Randolph, Peyton, 171; pres- 
ident of First Continental 
Congress, 176; 187; anger 
at passage of Henry's 
"Resolutions," 221; dele- 
gate to Convention, 1774. 
261; chosen president of 
Philadelphia Convention, 
262 

Rappahannock River, 152 

Rawdon, Lord, 337 

Raymond (whig lawyer) , 
211 

Raynal, Abbe, 347 

Rayneval, 396 

" Redemptioners," 14 

Redskins, the, 2, 80, 94, 109 

Reed, Joseph, opinion of 
Virginians, 262; offered 
bribe, 315 

Regiments ("Sam Adams's) , 

255 
Rehgion, Washington's, 159; 

160, 371, 373-374; Trevel- 

yan on, 374-377; 378, 385- 

386, 440 
Repeal of Stamp Act, 249 
Representation, 255, 256 



Index 



475 



"Resolutions" of Patrick 
Henry, 215 

"Resolves," 215-217 

Revenue, 210 

Revenue Acts, 204 

Revere, Paul, 249; "Mer- 
cury" of the Revolution, 
265 

Revolutionary Congress (2d), 
May 10, 1775, 265 

Richmond, third capital of 
Virginia, proposed by 
Jefferson, 171; 177 

Riedesel, 301 

Riedesel, Baroness, describes 
Burgoyne's surrender, 305- 
306 

Robertson, the historian, 
opinion of Americans, 254 

Robinson, Speaker, writes to 
Washington about Din- 
widdle, 112; formally 
thanks Washington, 131; 
219 

Rochambeau, Count, 299 ; 
arrives with fleet, 326; at 
Newport, 340; at York- 
town, 343; 361 

Rocheblave, French com- 
mander in the West, 391 

Rodney, Admiral, 342; de- 
feats De Grasse, 359 

"Rough Riders of the Re- 
volution," 337 

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 299 

"Rules of Civility," Wash- 
ington's, 13 

Rutledge, of South Carolina, 
eloquence, 262; Commis- 
sioner, 294 



St. Clair, Gen., 301; disaster 
to, 437 

St. John, 277 

St. Lawrence, 49, 207, 290 

St. Paul's Church (New 
York) attended by Wash- 
ington, 428 



St. Peter's Church where 
Washington was married, 
120 

Salary declined by Wash- 
ington, 273 

Salem, capital removed to, 

259 
Sandy Hook, 317 
Sandys, George, translates 

Ovid, 176 
Saratoga, 303 
Savannah, fall of, 320 
Scepticism of eighteenth 

century, 197 
Schuyler, Gen., 275, 277, 291 ; 

superseded by Gates, 303 ; 

in Burgoyne's surrender, 

304; anecdote of, 305-306 
Scotch exiles and immigrants 

as teachers, 14 
Scotch-Irish, arrival of, 62 
Scott, Gen. Charles, 180 
Scudder, H. E., quoted on 

character of American sol- 
diers, 270 
Sea -guard, 207 
Seal of Virginia, 185 
Sevier, Col., 338 
Seymour, Attorney-General, 

of Great Britain, 181 
"Shades of Death," the, 92 
Shays' Rebellion, 404 
Shelburne, Lord, 436 
Shelby, Col., 338 
Shenandoah, valley of the, 

23 
Sherman, Roger, on com- 
mittee to draft Declaration 
of Independence, 280 
Shippen, Mary, 328 
Siege of Boston, 273, 276 
Siege of Yorktown, 342 
"Signers of the Declaration," 

219 
Sign-ing of Peace, 366 
Sinclair, Sir John, 93 
Six Nations, atrocities of, 325 
Smith, John, 164 
Smith, Joshua H., 330 
Smuggling, 208 



476 



Index 



"Society of the Cincinnati," 
378 

Soldiers of the Revolution, 
their number, character, 
etc., 270, 272, 297; at 
Valley Forge, 313 

"Sons of Liberty," 143, 178, 
263 

"Soul of the Revolution," 
described by John Fiske, 
176 

South, campaign in, 307 

Southern campaign, 326 

Spain, 311 

Spotswood, Governor, 166; 
rebuilds William and Mary 
College, 1 69 ; 170; institutes 
order of "Knights of the 
Golden Horse Shoe," 177; 

185 ^ 

Spurious Letters, 316, 444 

Stamp Act, 176; debates on, 
189; Washington's opinion 
of, 191; 192; repeal of, 
193; Gov. Fauquier on, 
193-194; 194; described by 
Bancroft, 212; Walpole's 
opinion of, 214; Henry on, 
218 

Stamps, device on, 242 

Standing army, 204; Wash- 
ington favours, 296 

Stapleton, Capt., 370 

Stark, Col., 272; at Benning- 
ton, 303 

Staten Island, Lord Howe 
lands on, 279; 293 

States-General of Holland, 

311 

"States' Rights" party, 435 

Steuben, Baron von, 272, 
299, 300; describes army 
at Valley Forge, 314; in 
the South, 338; 379 

Stevens, Col., 336 

Stillwater, 303 

Stirling, Lord, 317 

Strachey, Peace Commis- 
sioner, 366 



"Struggle Begins, The" 256- 

282 
Stuart, Gilbert, 248, 433 
Suffolk, Lord, rebuked by 

Chatham, 295 
Sullivan, Gen., 285, 307, 325 
Sullivan, William, describes 

Washington's receptions, 

430 

"Summer Isles," 205 

Sumter, Gen., 336, 338 

Supreme Court, 435 

Surrender of Burgoyne, 304; 
consequences, 310 

Surrender of Cornwallis, 342; 
described by eye-witness, 
343-344 

Susquehanna River, 325 

"Swamp foxes" of the Revo- 
lution, 339 



Talleyrand, 451 

Tarleton, Col., 182, 336; the 
barbarities of, 338 

Tarry town, 331 

Tax (on tea, glass, etc.), 249 

Taxation, right of, 209; 
Grenville's opinion of, 212; 
P. Henry on, 216; growth 
of Washington's opinion 
on — his letters, 224-238 

Taylor, Zachary (grand- 
father of the President), 
gets surveyor's license at 
William and Mary College, 

175 

Tea, duty on, 233; as a sym- 
bol of tyranny, 240; Pepys 
on, 241 ; amount imported, 
241; amount in ware- 
houses, 243; arrival of, at 
Boston, 254 

"Tea-Party, The Boston," 
249, 250 

Tea ships, (Dartmouth, 
Eleanor, Beaver), 254 ar- 
rival of, 254 



Ind 



ex 



477 



Thacher's, Dr., Diary, de- 
scribes Washington, 321; 
Andre's execution, 332; on 
"Society of the Cincin- 
nati," 378-379 

Thackeray, W. M., opinion of 
American war in England, 
258; describes Washington, 
288; contrasts Prince Re- 
gent and Washington, 383- 

384 

Thanksgiving Day (the first) , 
1789, 430 

Thompson, Col., 291 

Thompson, Charles (first 
clerk of Continental Con- 
gress), 252 

Thomson, Mr., 426 

Ticonderoga, 277, 291, 301 

Tobacco, 20, 137; planta- 
tions of, 151; 170, 174; 
"tobacco question," 219 

Tories, described, 283; de- 
nounced by Watson, 315; 
exiled, 404 

Toryism, 255 

Townshend, Charles, pledges 
government to revenue act, 
210; favours Stamp Act, 
212 

"Treason," Patrick Henry 
on, 218; 220 

Treaty of Alliance (with 
France), 315 

Treaty of Paris (1763), 200; 
effects of, 203; problems 
involved in, 389 

Treaty with Spain, 442 

Trent, William, 65 

Trenton, battle of, 294; 296 

Tripoli, treaty with, 447 

Trumbull, Gov., of Conn., 

275 
Trumbull the painter, 248 
Truro Parish (Pohick 

Church), 156-157; Wash- 
ington a vestryman of, 

Tunis, 447, 452 

Turgot on Franklin, 381 



Tyler, Moses Coit, describes 
P. Henry's "Resolutions" 
and eloquence, 217-218; 



221-222 



"Tyrant," George III so 
designated by P. Henry, 



U 



University of Virginia, 183 
"Unsmiling Time," the, 297 

V 

Valley Forge, 272, 300; de- 
scribed, 312-314 

Vanbraam, Jacob inter- 
preter, 57, 74 

Varick, Col. Richard, 306 

Varlo describes Mount 
Vernon, 398-399 

Varus, 97 

Vergennes, Count de, 325, 
351; on Franklin, 381 

Verplanck (on the Hudson), 
the army at, 361 

Villiers, Coulon de, 75 

Vincennes, 391 

"Vincit qui patitur," 198 

Virginia, described by Col. 
Robert Beverley, popula- 
tion, climate, etc., 18; de- 
scribed by Bruce, 23-24, 
etc.; described by Percy, 
Whitaker, Williams, and 
Captain Smith, 25; popu- 
lation of, 178; leadership 
in Revolution, 194; cam- 
paign in, 341 

"Virginia Comedians," 176 

Virginia Convention, (of 
1 788) , ratifies Constitution, 
420; its members, 420 

Virginia Gazette, 189 

"Virginia Plan" (Constitu- 
tion of the United States), 

417 
Volney, the philosopher, 451 
Voltaire, spirit of, 197; 239, 

299; on Franklin, 381; 404 



478 



Index 



Voyageur, 49, 198 
Vulture, the (British ship), 
33° 

W 

Wakefield, home of the 
Washingtons, 5, 10 

Wall Street (New York) , De- 
claration of Independence 
read in, 283 

Walpole, Horace, 66; opinion 
of Botetourt, 149-150; of 
France, 202; letter to 
Horace Mann, 214; on 
Cornwallis's surrender, 345 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 212 

Wampum, 60 

War Commission, 323 

Ward, Gen., commands the 
right at Boston, 276; left 
in command at Boston, 
279 

Warm Springs (Berkeley 
County), 155 

Warren, Dr., 272, 273 

Warren, Joseph, 249 

Washington, Augustine, 
death, 10; sons of, 29 

Washington, George, birth, 4; 
education, 5 ; boyhood 
home, 5; amusements, 
learned surveying, 11, 
12; intended for the 
Navy, 29, 30; "sweet- 
hearts" of, 32, 33; writes 
verses, 35; Journal, 38-45; 
education, 46-63; Univer- 
sity, 46; education in 
woodcraft, exploration, sur- 
veying, etc., 4.6-63 Journal 
of his mission to the 
French, 57, 58; his pay, 
68 ; contrasted with Frank- 
lin, 84-85 ; marries Martha 
Custis, 51; date of mar- 
riage, 123-124; selected by 
Governor Dinwiddie, 53; 
aid-de-camp to Braddock, 
86-87 ; letters to Braddock, 



87-88; letters on Brad- 
dock's defeat, 98-102; his 
diplomacy, 62; reports to 
Dinwiddie on the "Half 
King," 70-74; his general 
correspondence, 104; cap- 
tured at Fort Necessity, 7 7 ; 
Burgesses vote thanks, 77; 
account of Braddock' s de- 
feat, 93-94; major and 
lieutenant-colonel, 59 ; 

writes to Burgesses de- 
nouncing vice, 107 ; to Din- 
widdie, 108-109; courtship 
and marriage, 117; abhors 
profanity, 106 ; reads burial 
service over Braddock, 
113; illness, 113; first letter 
to Martha Custis, 114; 
married probably at St. 
Peter's church, 120; chosen 
a Burgess, 124; modesty, 
131; passion for horses, 
131; Journal, 134; chariot, 
134; opinion of marriage, 
135; accomplishments, 1 36; 
model farmer, 146; resigns 
colonelcy, eulogised by fel- 
low ofincers, 147 ; chancellor 
of William and Mary Col- 
lege, 149; diaries, 150; love 
of art, etc., 152 ; painted by 
C. W. Peale, 153; plans to 
drain Dismal Swamp, 156; 
attends Pohick Church, 
156, 159; navigation of the 
Potomac, 156; James 
River and Kanawha Canal 
project, 156; advises Lord 
Dunmore, 156; how he 
passes Sunday, 156; attends 
Christ Church, Alexandria, 
after Revolution, 159; re- 
ligious opinions, communi- 
cant, 159; fasts, 159; 160; 
grief at Patsy Custis's 
death, 161; gets surveyor's 
license at William and 
Mary College, 175; writes 
to Col. Bouquet, 184; 



Index 



479 



Washington — Continued 
Stamp Act, igi; 192; re- 
peal of Stamp Act, 193, 
194; letters on taxation 
without representation, 
224-238; suggests "boy- 
cotting, "225; letter from G. 
Mason, 228-230; letters to 
Bryan Fairfax on taxa- 
tion, 230-238; opinion of 
duties on tea, 233 ; criticises 
Gage at Boston, 234; tea 
drinker, 241; autograph 
will, 260; fasts, 261; dele- 
gate to Convention, 261; 
sets out for Philadelphia, 
261; Henry's opinion of 
Col. Washington, 262; 
commander - in - chief of 
American armies, 265; 
letter to Mrs. Martha 
Washington, announcing 
appointment as com- 
mander-in chief, 266; will, 
267; arrival at Boston, 
271; declines salary, 273; 
personal appearance, 274; 
originates dispatch-system 
to Congress, 275; Congress 
thanks him and Harvard 
confers LL.D., 278; rides 
to Philadelphia, 279; plots 
against, 283; "Fabian 
Policy," 284; military ca- 
pacity, 285; at New York, 
292; evacuates New York, 
293; favours standing 
army, 296; appointed mili- 
tary dictator, 296; at Mor- 
ristown, 299; at Valley 
Forge, 312-314; described 
foreigner, 316; plots 
against, 316; at Monmouth 
Court House, 317; Lee's 
treachery, 318; described 
by Thacher, 321; by 
Franklin's daughter, 324; 
Luzerne's opinion of, 325; 
fears disunion, 328; repri- 
mands Arnold, 329; de- 



scribes Arnold's treachery, 
330; Washington described 
by Chastellux, 331; starts 
for Yorktown, 340; visits 
Mount Vernon, 342; fires 
first gun at Yorktown, 342 ; 
letter from Tom Paine, 
347; answers, 348-349; 
death of "Jackie" Custis, 
353 ; visits his mother, 353 ; 
devotion to, 356; letter 
from Col. Nicola suggesting 
him as king, 358; answer, 
358; doubts Peace Com- 
mission, 359; writes to 
McHenry, 360; described, 
362; quells insurrection, 
364; informs Congress of 
mutiny in the army, 364; 
365; writes to Greene, 367; 
on terms of peace, 368; 
to Hamilton, 368; dreads 
disunion, 369; receives 
terms of peace from Carle- 
ton, 369; 370; Orderly 
Book, 371; Circular Letter 
to Thirteen States, 372- 
373; his religion, church- 
manship, etc., 374-377; 
Fiske on, 377; President 
"Society of the Cincin- 
nati," 379; his "Farewell" 
to troops, 379; resi.gnation 
and last words to Congress, 
382-385 ; returns to Mount 
Vernon, 387; letter to B. 
Harrison, 395; writes to 
La Fayette, 395; described 
by foreigner, 396; elected 
Mason, 396 ; his correspond- 
ence, 397; visit from La 
Fayette, 397; described by 
Varlo, 398-399; German 
potentate on, 400; domes- 
tic habits of, 400-401; 
letter from Knox on dis- 
union, 405 ; plans scheme of 
inland navigation, 406; 
letter to R. H, Lee on, 
406, 407; to La Fayette, 



48o 



Index 



Washington — Continued 
on, 407; from La Fayette 
on the powers of Congress, 
410; answer, 410; Commis- 
sioner to Federal Conven- 
tion, 412 ; to Madison, 412- 
413; so goes Philadelphia, 
414; President of Federal 
Convention, 415; describes 
work of, 421; death of his 
mother, 423; 424; elected 
President, 424; to Knox on 
the presidency, 425; letter 
to Crevecoeur on presi- 
dency, 425; leaves Mount 
Vernon for Philadelphia, 
426; inaugurated President 
at New York, 426; ap- 
points cabinet, 428; estab- 
lishes code of etiquette, 
levees, etc., 428; charac- 
teristics of his administra- 
tions, 429 ; 430 ; lays comer- 
stone of Capitol, 432; ill- 
ness, 432; establishes fiscal 
policy, 435 ; policy tov/ards 
Indians, 437; letters from 
Hamilton, Jefferson, and 
Randolph urging re-elec- 
tion, 438; answers, 440; 
re-elected, 440; on party 
feeling, 443; his Farewell 
Address, 445 ; policies de- 
scribed by Marshall, 446; 
"Farmer Washington," 
449; occupations at Mount 
Vernon, 449; last days, 

450-453 

Washington, Col. John, an- 
cestor of Washington, III 

Washington, John and Law- 
rence, emigrants, i 

Washington, John A., letter 
to, describing Braddock's 
defeat, 100-10 1 

Washington, Lawrence, of 
Chotank, describes Wash- 
ington's mother, 9 

Washington, Lawrence, half- 
brother of Washington, 13; 



dies, leaves estate to 
George, 50 

Washington, Lawrence and 
Augustine, interested in 
Ohio Company, 68 

Washington, Lund, overseer 
at Mount Vernon, 341 

Washington, "Madam," 

Custis's account of, 7-8; 
personal appearance, 10; 
353; dies, 423 

Washington, Mrs. Martha, 
103-124; communicant of 
Episcopal Church, 160; 
letter from Washington an- 
nouncing appointment as 
commander-in-chief, 266; 
at Morristown, 299; at 
Valley Forge, 316 

Washington, Mary, mother of 
George, described, 28; 353; 
dies, 423 

Washington, Mrs. Mary, de- 
scribed by G. W. P. Custis, 

354 
Washington, "Patsy," ^^ 
Washington, Col. William, 

Washington (the ship) , 
brings tidings of peace, 367 

Watson, Elkanah, denounces 
Tories, 315 

Wayne, Gen., 307 

Wellington, Duke of, mod- 
esty contrasted with 
Washington's, 268 

West, the Great, 197, 199 

Westmoreland, 49 

Westover, 144 

West Point, 324, 325; Arnold 
at, 329 

Whig lawyers 211 

Whiggism, spirit of, 257 

V^hiskey Rebellion, 436 

White House, the, home of 
Mrs. Washington, 119 

Whitemarsh, 309 

White Plains, 324 

"Widow Custis," character- 
istics, marriage to Wash- 



Index 



481 



ington, etc., 103-124; first 
letter from Washington, 
114 

Wilderness, the, 49, 59, 61, 
105, 197, 389-390 

Wilkes, John (Lord Mayor of 
London), 276, 299 

Wilkinson, Major, announces 
Burgoyne's surrender, 310 

William and Mary College, 
149 ; described by Bumaby, 
164-165; described by 
Lossing, 165; modelled by 
Sir Christopher Wren, 169; 
foundation of, 173; wealth 
and age, 173; alumni of, 
174-175; 185-186; build- 
ings burnt, 182; con- 
trasted with Harvard 
College, 248 

Williams, Master, 59 

WilliamslDurg, ' ' Middle Plan- 
tation," 55; Burgesses 
meet at, 149; 163-164; 
population, 177 

"Williamsburg spirit," 181, 
182-183 

Willis, Col., founder of 
Fredericksburg, 13 

Willis, Mrs., dances with 
Washington, 356 

Willis, Col. Byrd, account of 
Washington's school days, 
15 



Will's Creek, 90 
Wilmington, 340; evacuated 

by British, 357 
Wilson reads Franklin's 

paper at Convention of 

1787, 417 
Wilson, Woodrow, describes 

Lord Fairfax, 36, 37; 

Martha Washington, 123; 

Philadelphia Convention, 

1774, 262-263 
Wirt, William, 130 
Wolcott, 442 
Wolfe, Gen., 74, 201 
Women of Virginia, 116, 133 
Wren, Sir Christopher, 

models William and Mary 

College, 169 
"Writs of Assistance," 176 
Wyatt, Sir Francis, 164 
Wythe, George, 171; poisoned 

by his nephew, 29 1 



Yeomanry of New England 
and New York, 302 

York River, 152, 164 

Yorktown, Comwallis reaches 
342; surrender of described 
by eye-witness, 343-344; 
consequences of, 353 



The Story of the Nations. 



In the story form the current of each National life 
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GREECE. Prof. Jas. A. Harrison. 

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GERMANY. S. Baring-Oould. 

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man. 

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Heroes of the Nations. 



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HEROES OF THE NATIONS 



NELSON. By W. Clark Russell. 
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. By C- 

R. L. Fletcher. 
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Other volumes in preparation are : 



WASHINGTON. 
Harrison. 



By J. A. 



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By Frederick Perry. 
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Smith. 
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Oman. 



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By T. A. Archer. 

By 



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Ruth Putnam. 



By 



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GREGORY VII. By F. Urquhart. 

MAHOMET. By D. S. MargoUouth. 



New York— G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Publishers— London 



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